Week 11

This week we discussed Michael Gecan's Going Public which gave numerous accounts of his public participation. Gecan emphasizes the importance of forming personal relationships and building a community voice in order to be heard by the government. An example of one of his actions is he went to a supermarket with others and inspected the food, most of which was moldy and out of date, and requested that the owner fixes the foods' standards. This confrontation and persistence led to the change that Gecan and his community wanted. Do you guys have any examples of times when you speaking up led to a positive change? Have you ever used Gecan's tactics?

Week 10

This week we discussed the Portrait of Our Generation and talked about what we know about our generation. What we know is we are: tolerant socially, environmentally conscious, like big businesses, like big governments, involved with technology, value the balance between ethics and profit, believes government has role to play, pro-intervention but anti-war, more democrats and independents, involved in celeb culture. Our conclusion is that we have the skills and resources to make change, but we need to use them to be politically useful. I feel like our generation has so much passion about so many important issues, we just need to use this passion to make change. Do you guys think that our generation is able to make change?

Week 11

This week we talked about "Citizen Revisited" and observed the questions "what makes a good citizen?" and "are there responsibilities and obligations of only rights and choices?" I think that as citizens we have obligations to vote and be politically engaged. I am not a citizen (I am a permanent resident) so I am unable to vote, but I do stay politically engaged and try my best to keep up with current events. We compared a classic republican to classic liberal. A classical republican believes in the freedom to rule/govern, and a classical liberal believes in protection of the law and freedom from interference. Do you guys agree that the government should be involved heavily with the people or just allow them to do their own thing?

Week 9

Yesterday, we discussed "Rebooting American Politics." We talked about the role technology has in attaining knowledge. Technology makes knowledge acquisition easier, but there is also a "digital divide"because there are certain people that use the internet for political knowledge more than others (typically, younger people use the internet for political purposes than older people). I think that it is great that it is so easy to keep up to date with politics through phones, which we generally carry with us anywhere. Personally, I get CNN updates to my phone, which is a really easy way to keep up to date with everything going on. What do you guys think about technology taking over the realm of political knowledge?

Week 8

This week we discussed "Avoiding Politics." The question presented was: "How does the context for political action or inaction get created in everyday life?" The groups observed in "Avoiding Politics" address this question-- excuses not to participate include that people would rather address issues "closer to home." This is because people like to tackle problems that they can actually change. By taking on larger issues, people begin to feel more helpless and overwhelmed. I think this kind of apathy takes on a  very individualistic stance; people only consider their own capabilities and neglect the change that a group effort can make. If instead of only addressing issues that can be changed locally, people decided to work together to change larger, more intimidating issues, then I think more would be achieved. It was also interesting to read about The Buffalos and their complete neglect towards politics. They carefully avoid all kinds of political discussion and instead stick to raunchy jokes and meaningless banter. What does this kind of apathy demonstrate? Deva also stated that there is a "pessimism of inevitability" which I found really interesting. So many people perceive things to be inevitable and then do not act on them, which is a pessimistic view. Instead, people should do everything in their power to address an issue in order to avoid the apathy that is conducted from the misconception of inevitability.

Week 7

The data from this Thursday's reading was really interesting. I don't think any of us were surprised from how most Americans our age answered those survey questions. In fact, I thought it was pretty funny. Do you think you would have answered them similarly? What would have been different? Also, in assessing our generation, I wonder how we got here. What are some of the contributing factors to this generation's lack of accountability and abundance of entitlement? What does that mean for the direction of our future political life?

Most of those results held true for me, but my number one goal in life is definitely not to be rich or famous, and I am certainly not pro-business. But the rest of it - my heroes are people I'm close to, I'm pretty optimistic of the future, I have piercings and dye my hair, I'm totally more left than my grandpa - I completely identify with. All of this reminds me of a particular TIME magazine article...

Week 6 Discussion

Hey, are either of you confused about what we were going over in regards to chapter 7 of The Unheavenly Chorus? I understood the general idea of how one's political participation may be directly and indirectly influenced intergenerationally, but I got lost when we started referring to intergenerational impact and privilege not being 'helpful' in explaining or relating to it?...