Responding Back to Injustice and Police Brutality Response I WILL GIVE 10.00 TIP IF GOOD WORK IS SHOWN. REQUIREMENTS: After reading/watching AT LEAST 3 o

Responding Back to Injustice and Police Brutality Response I WILL GIVE 10.00 TIP IF GOOD WORK IS SHOWN.

REQUIREMENTS:

After reading/watching AT LEAST 3 of the resources below (I WILL GIVE THE LINKS TO THE SOURCES WHEN CHOSEN), write your own response to the murder of George Floyd, the injustice of police brutality, and what’s going on in our world. Think about this like a journal/freewrite response. In addition to the resources below, your response can also be informed by what you’ve talked about with your family/friends, what we’ve talked about/studied in class, what you’ve read on your own, what you’ve seen on the news and social media, and what you’ve experienced in your own life.

Requirements:
– Your response must make connections between current events and historical context (the past).

– Your response must cite at least three of the resources below. If you want to include additional resources that you find important and helpful, definitely go for it! But this is in addition to three of the resources below.

– Your response must be at least one typed page. It must be written in complete sentences, with Times New Roman size 12 font.

If you feel stuck or want more structure, think about the following:
1. The importance of context in learning about a cause and taking action for a cause. This is why we study history — to empower people to better understand the world they live in and act today.

2. We’re studying the formation of our U.S. government and continually say in class that America is hypocritical. From the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to Chains to the Constitutional Convention (slavery compromises) to the Civil War to MLK and civil disobedience to Black Lives Matter… People are still fighting for basic human rights, and we have not lived up to the ideals of the American Revolution. Our founding documents include ideas and words like “justice for all” and “we the people”….and yet, all Americans are not treated equally. All Americans are not equally represented and protected under the law. How can this be? Why hasn’t this changed?

3. The use of loaded and racist language (rhetoric — designed to influence people’s perception/viewpoint on these events): “Thug,” “riot,” “law and order”…
How does this language shape the story and people’s perceptions of the issue?

4. What can you do? What can we do? How do people create change, and why use protests to achieve justice? Are protests effective?

5. What connections do you see to our study of history? What do you think students and young people need to understand about George Floyd’s murder and these protests?

“We express our deepest sympathy to the families and communities of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the far too many preceding them whose needless deaths were brought about by unjustified violence. We hope that their pain and sorrow compel America to confront its tortured racial past, and that this moment becomes the impetus for our nation to address racism and social inequities in earnest.”

— Lonnie Bunch (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

I look at the world
BY LANGSTON HUGHES

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

Langston Hughes, “I look at the world” from (New Haven: Beinecke Library, Yale University, )