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of one of his actions is he went to a supermarket with others and inspected the food, most of which was moldy and out of date, and requested that the owner fixes the foods' standards.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?