[Anushka Rastogi]

With undocumented immigrants there is often a misconception that they are lazy and take all the American resources. This misconception has, in recent years, been spread and reinforced through authority figures like our current president. However, as discussed in class, we know that it is not true. Many of the undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, and as a person in our class mentioned, undocumented immigrants have an ITIN, Individual Tax Identification Number, that they use. The picture I have chosen is a screenshot from an interactive map from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that I will link below which shows how much undocumented immigrants pay in taxes every year. In California alone, undocumented immigrants pay over $3 billion in taxes. In states like California, Texas, and New York, the taxes that these undocumented immigrant pay is a huge part of these states’ economy. It is interesting so see that people have a problem with law abiding, tax paying undocumented immigrants when so many other citizens of the United States receive tax breaks that they do not need.

Link/Source: https://itep.org/immigration/

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[Anushka Rastogi]

This week’s topic is Legalized Islamophobia and during the entire time we discussed this week, I often thought about Ahmed Mohamed, a 14 year old teen who was arrested at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He brought a homemade alarm clock that he made from scratch to his school, but a teacher saw it and thought it was a bomb and called the police. At only 14 years old, Ahmed was questioned and was taken into custody without being able to talk to or see his parents. Ahmed’s family sued the city for Islamophobia and civil rights violations, but a judge ruled that there was not enough evidence to support that. While the judge may have ruled it was not Islamophobia, Ahmed received death threats, but a hashtag called #IStandWithAhmed was started on twitter to call out the racism. Many people said that if it were another person who was not Muslim or brown, the homemade clock invention would have been applauded by his teachers.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/clock-boy-ahmed-mohamed-sues-texas-city-accusing-him-making-n625401

Date: Sept 17th, 2015

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[Anushka Rastogi]

In class we discussed Japanese-American “Internment” and we discussed how these camps that the Japanese Americans were detained at were concentration camps more than internment camps. Most of the Japanese that were there were American citizens but the fact that they looked like the Japanese who bombed pearl harbor made them unlucky subjects of incarceration. During the class discussion I had briefly talked about my experience at the Manzanar Relocation Center. While I didn’t remember details then, when I looked at the pictures I took, I was flooded with the memories of visiting the historical site. I remember it being a desolate area and my family and I went inside the museum and there was a film that talked about the horrors that the Japanese Americans were subdued to. In a sense, they were slaves, who had to go through forced labor and were denied basic rights. While the long house like structures looked big, they fit about 400 people inside each one, and each person was given a straw filled mattress to sleep on and a blanket. The showers and toilets were open and had no privacy. The Japanese-Americans that were there were dehumanized. The picture I have attached is my family and friends (and me) at the entrance of the historical site.

Source: my camera; 2012

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Anushka Rastogi.

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[Anushka Rastogi]

Part of this week’s theme was James Baldwin and his affect on the civil rights movement. He, as we could tell from his literary works, was an eloquent writer who wrote about the injustice of African Americans. Both as an author and as someone who stood for social justice, he has inspired many modern day writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Toni Morrison, who is the picture I have chosen for this week. Toni Morrison wrote novels and essays that focused around the theme of race. She often gives credit to James Baldwin for her inspiration. When Baldwin died in 1987, she wrote an open eulogy for him which was published in the New York Times and discussed how his works were were raw and real, discussing the reality and “stripped it of ease and false comfort and fake innocence and evasion and hypocrisy” (Morrison 1987). She thanked him for giving her the gift of language, courage, and tenderness (Morrison 1987).

 

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9395051/Toni-Morrison-on-love-loss-and-modernity.html

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[Anushka Rastogi]

This picture is a mugshot of Martin Luther King Jr., when he was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 for protesting against segregation. This is the jail where MLK wrote the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. King went to jail without any resistance, and this is reflected in his letter when he states ” ‘Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?’ and ‘Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail'” (King 1963). Many of these nonviolent protestors had to go through extensive training for times like this when they could have been jailed or other times where they were hosed down by the police. I chose this picture because despite being nonviolent, King is still criminalized through the mugshot, meaning he did something wrong.

Source: https://prisonphotography.org/tag/martin-luther-king/ ; originally taken on April 12th, 1963

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[Anushka Rastogi]

This week’s topic is Civil Rights Today and this powerful picture, taken by Jonathan Bachman, of this woman really stood out to me. In Baton Rouge, she is both mourning the loss of Alton Sterling, a black man who was killed by the police, as well as protesting police brutality. I chose this picture because of the determined look on this woman’s face as these police officers try to come and get her. The way she stands her ground–her body language shows that she is not afraid of the police and she will be here until some change is made. There is no violence or anger or fear in her eyes. Her expression is stern, but peaceful, telling people to take her seriously as she fights for the rights for black people to be treated as humans.

Source: Jonathan Bachman, July 2016 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36759711)

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