Author Archives: kl158194

Native Americans and Prison movements in the 1960s (Extra Credit)

by kl158194

  

 

 

As feminist movements began to take over the 1960’s, other movements began to form as well including the Native American rights movement.

“As the civil rights and antiwar movements developed in the 1960s, Indians were already gathering their energy for resistance, thinking about how to change their situation, beginning to organize.”

Zinn explains that Native Americans were beginning to take action for their own rights and to declare their own destiny for the cause. He talks about how Native Americans were treated throughout history and how that there was not enough support for their own rights.

“Resistance was already taking shape in various parts of the country. In the state of Washington, there was an old treaty taking land from the Indians but leaving them fishing rights. This became unpopular as the white population grew and wanted the fishing areas exclusively for themselves.”

Many non Indians failed to respect those treaties that was supposed to help the Native Americans. Natives were still being treated as a nobody and as outcasts. They were considered to be on the same page as blacks or even at the very bottom. The Indians always insisted their territory was separate  and not to be invaded by the white man’s law.

To conclude things up, I think there was a clear cut reason why Howard Zinn included these kinds of individuals and movements in this chapter. Native Americans were clearly being taken advantage of from land, treaties, you name it.

 

 

Obviously the women’s movement was biggest picture of the 1960s, but the emergence of the Prison Abolition movement was not far behind.

“The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless “reforms” that changed little.”

This movement seeks to reduce and eliminate prison systems and replace them with a more effective system than they had back then. Dostoevski even notes that : “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” These prisons reflected a society between the social classes of the rich and the poor. However, Zinn explains that minorities in the prisons were treated worse than whites. “It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail.” Zinn says that these “minorities” are more likely to end up in jail in the first place, not just because they committed more crimes, but they didn’t have the resources like the rich. They didn’t have the luxuries that the rich had like getting out on bail, or hiring good lawyers. Finally, this whole inequality within the prison system led to the movement of a more effective system

Mirrors Can Reflect a Society

by kl158194

What you see in a society everyday can change who you are as a person with limited life options. That is just what happened to Travis Bickle in the movie, Taxi Driver. As a taxi driver, Travis witnessed how society was ran with the prostitution, pornography, crime, and garbage on the streets and sidewalks. He became outraged and this turned his life around to a whole new direction. To satisfy his frustration, he buys a number of guns from a gun dealer.

There was one scene that reflected Travis as a character and how he was portrayed in the society in the 1970’s. He looked into a mirror of himself as if he confronted an imaginary person with a gun. He says “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” as well as saying this following line “Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is someone who stood up” Society literally changed Travis to a lonely man that he is forced to speak into a reflection of himself. He has no one to make contact with and he is his own enemy. The reflection portrayed what Travis truly was in society; a lonely, violent individual.

Sojourner Truth, Address to the First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (1867)

by kl158194

“I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man. There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.

 

The victory in the Civil War led to emancipation and freedom for the slaves. This meant that they would be set free from all legal, social, and political restrictions just like the whites. In short, this means blacks have the same rights and equality as the whites regardless of gender, race, or color right? Not so fast. Sojourner Truth spoke out in a meeting of the American Equal Rights Association in 1867 to advocate granting suffrage to black women immediately. She claims that the equal rights movement had led to black men achieving new and more rights than black women, which extended suffrage to black men. She uses this as motivation to help award hardworking, and deserving black women, just like herself, more rights. She thinks black men get more attention than black women  and therefore black men winning new rights. This clearly shows black men have more power and control in society than black women. It will be just as bad as slavery because black men will be the head of the household and have control over black women with their newly awarded powers and rights. If they don’t speak out or make an example, nothing will change and it will keep going downhill from there. Black women deserve their rights just as much as black men. Women’s suffrage is a necessity and a requirement in society.