TOW #10 - Hate Crimes on the Rise

In the recent news of Presidential elect, Donald Trump's, victory on November 8th, the nation is divided into two very distinct reactions to the news. Half of the population is rejoicing, while the other half is in a state of mourning, shock, anger, and protest. How these two very different sides will be able to live with one another for the next few years, nobody knows. However, one thing is for certain: hate crimes have been on the rise ever since November 8th. 

After Obama's victory in 2008 and 2012, conservatives rallied and protested his taking into office. They behavior was atrocious and inexcusable: calling Obama every racist slur ever imagined and making threats against him and his family. This time, the tables have turned, but unlike 2008 or 2012, protesters aren't protesting the orange-ness of Donald Trump's skin, rather they are angered and disapproving of his words and actions taken against Muslim-Americans, Jewish- Americans, blacks, the LGBTQ+ community, women, the disabled, Hispanics, and more. 

In an article punished by the Southern Poverty Law Center, they brought together and analyzed the alarming number of hate crimes that have occurred by state since November 8^th, "Incidents by type ranked by number of reports include: Anti-immigrant (206), anti-Black (151), anti-LGBT (80), swastika vandalism (60), anti-Muslim (51), and anti-woman (36)”. Overall, the trend shows the communities that Trump once targeted in his run, under attack from white supremacists, better known as Trump supporters. Coincidence? Most likely not.

Although Donald Trump himself has spoken up about these hate crimes, his supporters don't seem to be getting the message. The real question isn’t whether Trump secretly condones these crimes, but rather if he inspired them or if his election merely gave white supremacists a chance to show their real colors. Donald Trump is just a person, who happens to be racist, sexist, and xenophobic, and as shown through the electoral map on November 8^th, isn’t all that uncommon. However, the idea of Trump is what inspires such heinous hate crimes.

In this political cartoon by well-respected artist Robert Ariail, he depicts the contrast in ideas between the GOP and the Statue of Liberty, which is an image of the American Dream. Ariail is an editorial cartoonist for The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina. The historical context behind this is the 2016 election in which the Republican candidate consistently makes remarks about turning a back to needy immigrants. Ariail draws this in order to show Trump supporters how they are actually being ‘un-American’ by supporting the deportation and limiting the number of immigrants admitted into the country. He does so by using allusion and juxtaposition in the cartoon. The Statue of Liberty is a commonly known icon due to its sheer size and history. The use of allusion really helps serve the author’s purpose because it helps the onlooker grasp the importance of this image and forces the reader to stimulate memories, ideas, and associations to help them put the cartoon in context. In addition to allusion, Ariail also uses juxtaposition between Lady Liberty and the GOP to show humility and acceptance versus xenophobia and denial. These two ideas help convey to the reader Ariail’s point of view against xenophobia, showing the harsh and crude stance taken on by the GOP. Throughout the picture, his point is clearly shown and conveyed: by turning away those seeking the American Dream, we as Americans are losing our sense of American-ism and our initial purpose for this country.

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TOW #8- Stronger Together

In a riveting and eye-opening article by Harvard Gazette, female soccer players address the objectification that they experience on a day-to-day basis. The women of this article are finally standing up for equality and to end the sexual profiling of everyday women. The authors are all students at Harvard and to build on their credibility, they are all women who play sports.Their specific audience are women in general. The reader can tell because the authors refer to fellow women as "us", "we", and "our". The authors also use parallelism in order to stress their point. "We want your help in combatting this. We need your help in preventing this. We cannot change the past, but we are asking you to help us now and in the future." By using this type of writing, the authors successfully convey their point across. The purpose of parallelism is for repetition to force the readers to hear and understand what the authors are saying. In addition to parallelism, the authors also use emotional syntax to convince the reader to end the objectification of women, "to the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects, in the words of one of us, we say together: “I can offer you my forgiveness, which is—and forever will be—the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.'". The use of phrases such as "I can offer you my forgiveness" and "forever will be" are emotional and appeal to the readers emotions. Thus, thanks to the use of parallelism and emotional syntax, the authors successfully convey their message across to the readers. 

TOW #7- Homage to Catalonia PT2

In George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, he describes his experience of the Spanish civil war in which the was much turmoil. Written during WWII, Spain was in a great divide. There was both a Fascist government and a Republic government attempting to reign over the people of Spain. Orwell is a highly renound writer and journalist, for his works are still being appreciated today. At the time, Orwell’s troops are facing shortages of many essential supplies such as clothing, He is writing for an audience at home, which in this case is the civilian population in America. The reader can tell because Orwell goes into depth explaining military diction because his audience is not expected to understand it. and In Orwell is personally dealing with an outbreak of lice. He remarks, “I think the pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war, indeed!” (Orwell 54). Here, Orwell shows some of his dissatisfaction at the war. however it is for the same purpose as when he previously described the conditions the men were facing: to build up the image of the Communists. For example, he later says “Everything was running short - boots, clothes, tobacco, soap, candles, matches, olive oil. Our uniforms were dropping to pieces, and many of the men had no boots, only rope-soled sandals. You came on piles of worn-out boots everywhere. Once we kept a dug-out fire burning for two days mainly with boots, which are not bad fuel.” (Orwell 54).  Here Orwell aims to show just how poorly the Spanish were faring, and that despite that they were still attempting to fight on. This shows Orwell's general purpose of attempting to show the fighters as being good people, with good characteristics who were poorly armed but still fought on, believing in their cause - making them far more sympathetic to the reader. He is trying to show to the reader that soldiers that live and die in war have no fault in the conflict itself, for they are only puppets in the grand scheme. Orwell effectively achieves his purpose by illustrating the good, the bad, and everything in the war.