[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

For this weeks photo share I decided to select a “funny” poster from a gay rights demonstration in Sydney, Australia in 2011. The photo says “If I like it then I should be allowed to put a ring on it.” The first reason I selected this photo is because Beyonce is great, but the second (and main) reason is because it highlights how simple gay rights should be. The poster is a bit of an understatement, because nothing in the world is this simple, but why can’t it be? I’ve always thought that gay rights was going to be another one of the things down the road in 20 years that we couldn’t believe we let happen as a country. It seems so simple, if two people love each other, they should be allowed to marry. End of story. But, like I said, nothing in the world is that simple, and so I’ve always seen this struggle as one of the things that we would look back on in disbelief (in the same – but different – sort of way we look back on Slavery, Japanese Internment, etc.).

I connect to this week’s theme of the right to marry and the right to exist because marriage ought to be one of the things every human being is entitled to. I’m not sure what it is, maybe marriage is embedded into religion too much, but it needs to be as simple as if two people love each other, they should be able to get married. I also tied this in to our class discussions about these people are stripped of their humanity. At the end of the day, it should be regarded as two human beings getting married, not two men or two women.

Article Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/australian-court-dismisses-challenge-gay-marriage-postal-survey-n799801

Photograph by Rick Rycroft (AP) on Dec. 3, 2011.

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

This week I decided to select a photo from an article about children separated from their parents due to our country’s immigration policy. In the article, the judge talks about Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy and how appalled he is that thousands of children are separated from their families “with no due process and no judicial oversight.” The photo shows a child holding up a sign “Niños necesitan a sus padres” which means “children need their parents” in English, at a protest of Donald Trump’s immigration policy in El Paso, Texas. I connected this photo and article to this week’s (and last week’s) discussion of how we have hypocritical values placed on family in the United States. Our values (religious or not) are often centered around family and yet, as a country we enforce a system that separates and ultimately ruins families. Additionally, its ridiculous that we strip these children of their constitutional rights, especially their rights to a fair trial – considering their future rests in the hands of how the court rules.

Article: http://time.com/5323417/president-donald-trump-family-separation-due-process-children/ by Darlene Byrne on June 27, 2018.

Photograph by Joe Raedle (Getty Images) – June 21, 2018.

 

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

For this week’s photo share I decided to spice it up and select a political cartoon. It is an extremely simplistic image with a very deep message. Dreamers are people that were brought into the country at a young age (undocumented), but on a path to obtaining their legal status. The cartoon seeks to point out that with Trump in office, many Dreamers don’t feel safe and feel their life in the United States is threatened. This cartoon is so effective because it only uses two words, yet displays the fear on the little girl’s face (shared amongst other Dreamers) and the evil in President Trump’s face in the eyes of those Dreamers. This image relates to this week’s topic of Illegality and Civil Rights because DACA/Dream Act is central to the Immigration Debate and central to our class. I believe this is one of the most important discussions we have had so far, because it is not talking about the past – it’s talking about something that is right in our face, and something we need to fix. I also believe that as a country we often get caught up in what is technically legal v. illegal, that we forget about what is human v. inhuman.

Cartoon by Steve Benson (Creators Syndicate). Date Unknown.

https://www.usnews.com/cartoons/immigration-cartoons (Image 3).

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

The photo I selected is a similar image to those that my classmates posted: Protests (post 9/11) against Islam. The posters being carried by the protesters both reveal the same stereotype at heart – that all Muslim/Islamic/Southeast Asian people are terrorists. After 9/11 occurred, widespread fear took over the United States and the people wanted a group to point their finger to. Grouping together these people under the same umbrella “Islam” was an easy out, but was extremely flawed and had many negative effects on those people. Islam has never equaled Terror, yet the acts of a few terrorists has made society think otherwise.

I connect this to our weekly topic – Legalized Islamophobia and the War on Terror because it perfectly displays two defining characteristics of Islamophobia. The first is that there are many groups of people that are stereotypically forced into the group “Islam,” and the second is that if you are labeled Islamic, then you are a terrorist. Reading this out loud seems absurd and hard to believe that there was (and still is) a time in our history where we believed this, but it did happen, and still does to this day. I believe this shows how great the effect ‘fear’ can have on society.

The “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy Was a Harbinger Of Our Times

Photographer Unknown, Article By Jason Tebbe (March 21, 2018) regarding Ground Zero Mosque in NYC.

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

The photos I selected relating to the topic of Japanese American Internment were two nearly identical images. The first image displays three Japanese American children behind barbed wire fence in one of the Internment Camps. The second image displays about a dozen Polish children behind barbed wire fence in a concentration camp in Poland. If you ignore the physical features of the children in these photos, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish the two, which makes me wonder how different Japanese Internment Camps and Nazi Concentration Camps were. While its important to be sensitive to the experiences of both groups, it’s extremely easy to draw some parallels between the two.

This clearly relates to the theme of the week – Japanese internment. Executive Order 9066 was a direct result of fear of the enemy, but it contradicted constitutional rights, and in a way, highlighted the hypocrisy of the United States’ decisions. It’s ironic how the United States would go to war against Germany, a country who deprived others of their freedom and threw them in concentration camps (obviously along with other cruel acts), yet in our own country we would deprive our own people of their constitutional rights and throw them in camps as well. I think it’s a very touchy subject for both sides (Japanese Americans and Jewish people), so I tried to stay neutral and just point out the similarities of the two without completely stating “Japanese American Internment was like Nazi Concentration Camps.” I can understand that from a certain perspective, it may diminish the experience of the Jewish people who were a part of Nazi concentration camps by giving the two the same name.

https://www.newsweek.com/2017/02/24/manzanar-japanese-internment-camp-trump-extreme-vetting-556944.html

Photo by TOYO MIYATAKE (date unknown)

https://aleteia.org/2017/11/26/did-you-know-there-was-a-concentration-camp-for-children-little-auschwitz/

Photo by Alexander Voronzow taken January 27^th 1945

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

The photo I have chosen is of James Baldwin smiling. There isn’t necessarily a historical significance to this image but it portrays him as a more “human” civil rights leader. Other civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, for example, are usually portrayed preaching or giving speeches, often making a “power” gesture with their hand (like pointing, or raising their fist). This distinguishes Baldwin because he is often photographed expressing a wide range of emotions, whether he is happy, sad, confused, or just making a funny face.

This image is relevant to the theme of the week of Malcolm X and James Baldwin because it demonstrates how Baldwin is different. After learning this week about his thoughts of (and attempts at) suicide, and his leaving the country in order to escape the racism and oppression, I see Baldwin as more human than the other civil rights leaders. It is easier for me to begin to try to understand what oppressed groups had to experience in that time period, listening to and watching someone like James Baldwin than it is for me to listen to Malcolm X. This is because, in my opinion, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. are seen as “gods” of the Civil Rights Movement, and it’s easier for me to feel the pain of a man so human, with such complex emotions like James Baldwin.

I found this photograph on a website I was looking at earlier in the week listing James Baldwin Famous quotes. It stuck out to me because there was so emotion expressed on his face.

https://jokohok.info/navi/h/james-baldwin-famous-quotes/

Photographer and Date of Photograph is unknown.

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

The photo I have selected is from the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery on March 21st, 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. is seen here leading a large group, alongside his wife, Coretta Scott King, protesting the voting rights (or lack thereof) of African Americans. This march is often highlighted when discussing the factors that led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act later on in that year, in 1965. This photo also demonstrates the style of protesting that Martin Luther King Jr. regularly promoted – nonviolent peaceful protest.

This photo doesn’t necessarily relate to Malcolm X specifically, but it’s important to note that while their “goals” may have been the same in the long run, their ideas on how to achieve their goals weren’t always the same. Malcom X differed in style in ways that he would often promote “self-defense” and would criticize the nonviolent ways of Martin Luther King Jr. That is why I believe this photo is relevant to this weeks discussion about MLK Jr. and Malcom X. I also chose this image because it was such a crucial event in American History that they made a movie about it called Selma in 2014.

 

Photo taken on March 21, 1965 by unknown photographer. Source: NY Daily News

CBS News (original photo that couldn’t be downloaded)

link: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-demonstrators-reach-montgomery-selma-1965-article-1.2137302

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/iconic-photos-of-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/12/

 

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[ALEXANDER ATHANACIO]

The image I choose to present to the photo share was of Emily Ratajkowski (actress, model) and Amy Schumer (actress, comedian) protesting the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court to replace Anthony Kennedy. A total of 302 people were arrested on that day, protesting outside a Senate building in D.C., both Ratajkowski and Schumer included. Kavanaugh was accused by multiple women of sexual assault, which it makes it worrisome that a man with this past can be a part of the highest court in the land.

The reason I chose this article is because it displays the power that famous people have on society. I had personally not heard of this protest until I saw posts about it on Ratajkowski’s instagram. Then I started looking into the protest, and started looking into who Brett Kavanaugh really was. I always saw stories about him on the news, but it never really enticed me to want to learn more about it. But when it popped up on my Instagram feed, posted by someone who I followed, I realized it was a bigger part of my life than I had realized. So I started looking into he was, and found out he has a controversial opinion on abortion, a controversial opinion on how much power the Executive Branch should have, and a controversial past of sexual assault accusations. I can definitely compare this to the discussions we had in class on the political power of “unpolitical people” in society due to their social status, like Taylor Swift and Colin Kaepernick using their platform to reach many people on pressing issues.

 

Article from CNN by Emanuella Grinberg on October 5th 2018:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/us/amy-schumer-emily-ratajkowski-arrested-kavanaugh-protests/index.html

Image from extratv.com (celebrity news website) on October 4th 2018:

http://extratv.com/2018/10/04/amy-schumer-and-emily-ratajkowski-arrested-at-brett-kavanaugh-protest/

 

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