This week, we talked about drug addiction and homelessness and the attention, or lack thereof, that’s received by each. We watched a Ted Talk about a woman who was exhibiting signs of schizophrenia throughout her life and talked about the things that were and were not helpful for her as well as what seemed useful for most people that suffer from mental illnesses of their own. She talked about how going to therapy and taking medication was very helpful for her, but she also mentioned one thing that was more of a detriment than assistant to her was being restrained when she had one of her episodes. She noted that people die in restraints every day due to complications from being tied down, and that it does more harm than good.

Another topic from the week was the video production on Skid Row in California. Skid Row is home to the largest population of people who suffer from homelessness, doubling the amounts of New York and Chicago combined. The video talks about how 30% of homeless people in the country suffer from some form of mental illness, and talks about how these people never get the proper attention they require. Many are addicted to drugs as a result of their circumstance, and are simply labeled as addicts. During the video, we learn the story of a woman named Sharon, who was homeless on and off for about 25 years of her life. She was sleeping outside of a public library, couldn’t seem to get back on her feet and had lost the will to live but couldn’t find a way to end her own suffering. She felt trapped. But then she caught the break of a lifetime when she went to a treatment center and they helped her turn her life around. She got back on her feet, got herself a stable living environment and started working for the same treatment center that helped her get back on her feet. Sharon was lucky enough to receive this opportunity, but many people who suffer from homelessness, mental illness or drug addiction don’t receive nearly the amount of help they need. The “homeless”, the “ill” and the “addicts” are typically incarcerated or just out right discarded as they are often dehumanized and seen as not worth the treatment and care they deserve. There are treatment centers dedicated to addressing these issues and caring for those who need it and lack the resources, but clearly not enough is being done nationally to subdue an epidemic that has plagued the largest cities/markets in the country.

This week, we focused on hip-hop and the connotations that come with it as well as the messages behind some of its premiere artists over the years. This topic was one of great interest to me. As a long time fan of hip-hop and focusing on lyrics within the music, I have a deep appreciation for the art and the power that it has with much of the African American culture. One of the activities we did in class this week was watch a Ted Talk featuring somewhat unconventional gospel hip-hop artist, Lecrae. In this talk, Lecrae discusses the history of the art form and the perceptions of it throughout the years. He explains that to many people, hip-hop has a negative connotation of being villainous music that has a bad influence on the younger, impressionable generations by glorifying things such as drugs, violence and misogyny. Although some music can fit this creteria, Lecrae noted that the genre wasn’t always this way and in fact, the early years of the genre were aimed are relating a message to the public that was heavily anti-drug as well as anti-violence and was used as a way to inform people of the issues faced in most urban areas around the country. The culture of the music changed with the times, but many artists today still use their platform to do similar things. Artists such as J Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino and Joey Bada$$ among others use their talent to create informative, quality art that explains the issues the African American culture faces regularly, something that past artists such as 2 Pac, Nas, Method Man and others were able to accomplish. The aforementioned artists are polarizing icons in the industry because of their ability to have great storytelling and lyrics in their music, a rarity in the grand scheme of things. And having artists like these prove that the nature of hip-hop hasn’t always been nor is currently aimed at positioning the youth or spreading venomous messages as some may believe. Hip-hop is about telling a story the way the artists best see fit, and it makes for a beautifully complex work of art that isn’t for everyone, but is surely for me.

This week, we talked about girls in activist movements. We focused primarily on young girls and their impacts on certain movements. A group I was working with focused on Sophie Cruz, a now 10 year old activist who at 5 became a spokesperson and eventual champion for the rights of immigrants. With her pro immigration letter and drawing that she hand delievered to the Pope, her celebration of Cinco de Mayo with President Barack Obama at the White House while her undocumented parents had to wait outside, to her being invited to speak at the Women’s March in 2017 and calling for immigration reform to protect our families, Sophie shed light on a pressing issue this country’s faces and didn’t let her age or her gender stop her on the way to accomplishing the goals she set out for herself. Her story is very inspiring…The second thing we focused on this week was video editing. We used Adobe Preimiere Pro to edit a Pepsi video that was controversial with it’s imagery, exploitation of cultural and societal issues and simple mindset that the world can be corrected with a Pepsi. The commercial used Kendall Jenner, a completely wrong choice for the cover person of societal issues having never had to deal with one on her own, so I edited out every part of the video she appears in. I also edited long, drawn out parts of the commercial to help with transitional flow with the other scenes I removed. I decided to use the second section of music to cover the remaining time of just under a minute as I felt it fit the scenes I selected much better. What wasn’t left after I finished my editing made me feel better about the commercial and provides a more empathetic view for the public.

In week three, we talked about why resources are important for social movements, the different types of resources, different terminology revolving around social movements and their impacts, as well as watching a very interesting video about a woman from Nigeria and her experiences and stories as an author. When you consider resources that are necessary for social movements, things such as time, money, skills, and willing participants are things that are vital for social movements to be successful. Something such as funding is a tangible type of resource, a clear way of how it aids in a movement. Something like time or commitments are intangible resources, things that you aren’t able to feel but are felt in the process of a movement by the assistance they provide. We talked about constituents and That there are conscience constituents in beneficiary constituents. Conscience constituents are people who join a particular movement because it is the right thing to do, not because there is a potential benefit for them while beneficiary constituents benefit from the movement in which they are participating. Something I found interesting is collective identity, in which a sense of shared experiences and values connect individuals to movements, such as African Americans connecting to the Black Lives Matter movement after numerous instances of police brutality or the me too movement becoming very relevant on twitter after numerous woman came forward to share their stories of sexual assault and misconduct. The second topic I wanted to mention was the story of Chimamanda Adichie given through a TedTalk. An author, Adichie grew up in Nigeria and that came with many negative connotations from people she interacted with outside of her home and even in her own life. Adichie says she had a friend who had a default position to people from African nations and that there was “no possibility” of Africans being human equals to European counterparts. Adichie wrote about people from her nation in a situation of doing well, which a professor of hers told her wasn’t realistic enough because the characters in her story were too much like him, doing well for themselves. The characters didn’t fit the stereotype that many people have against people from African nations, creating a single story. The idea of a single story was prominent in this talk as Adichie mentions the single story about all Africans, the single story she had about her family’s house boy Fide when she could only see his family as being poor, and the single story that kept people from fully embracing her writing. Once Adichie got out of the mindset that there had to be a single story for a group of people, she was able to include people like her in her writing, people from African nations that break the stereotype and don’t limit narratives of entire people. Coming from a minority background and having faced multiple instances of a single story, this idea of breaking the societal norms that are placed on a group of people from outside observers who only recognize stereotypes was a very powerful message.

In week two, we discussed theories of social movements and collective action. We discussed collective behavior theories which are also referred to in some cases as strain or breakdown theories, the reason being because they often occur during times of social despair such as societal divisions among groups. Collective behavior theories arise from some sort of breakdown or strain but in order for the theories to arise, there has to be some common set of shared beliefs among people. The Chicago School makes a point that collective behavior comes about during situations where established systems of meaning and sources of information break down, forcing its participants to construct new meanings themselves to guide their behavior. This could be a form of symbolic interactionism: constructing meanings through social interaction. These new meanings are created from emergent norms, the shared view so of reality that guide collective behavior. Something that was interesting to me was the idea of Mass Society Theory which views collective behavior as an extreme response to social isolation, meaning people are more motivated to mobilize when they are isolated. A critique of this would be the opposite, stating that most people are less likely to mobilize when they’re in a circumstance of isolation. Personally, I believe that people will have more motivation to group together and take action when they are isolated as a way to feel recognized, understood, heard, etc. It makes sense to construct larger groups of like minds and create new meanings when many individuals feel like just that, individuals who aren’t noticed without mobilization. One thing I didn’t agree with however is Relative Deprivation Theory, which states that people often rebel when things are improving. I believe people tend to rebel when they see something getting progressively worse or they see the powers that be having a lack of attention or care to something the group holds in high regard.

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The image I decided to use was from Walmart. One of the slogan says Walmart uses is “Save money. Live better.” The reason I decided to keep the company name and change the slogan presented is to emphasize what Walmart truly stands for to many. I have seen documentaries, interviews and even known people that have worked for Walmart that have talked about how poorly the employees are treated. This ranges from poor pay, to less than equal treatment and little to no benefits for all the labor that the job requires. This is a form of culture jamming, which is to disrupt or subvert some sort of mainstream media, such as corporate advertising in this example, to draw attention to an issue about a company or group. I used the background of fire to relay a message that I’ve heard numerous times: “Working in Walmart is like working in Hell”.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.