http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJEzEDMqXQQ

I recently discovered this song about a year or two ago. I immediately was struck by how hilarious the video was. These 3 “hippie” guys that make up the group going to  a school run by b-boys and other typical hip hop style guys. This song struck a chord with me not only because of the video but the fact that it portrays a different kind of person. Not just someone who follows the style but someone who is true to themself. In the neighborhoods I grew up in I never really belonged to a single group. I liked all kinds of music not just hip hop. I cartoons and mindlessly watching t.v. but I also liked to learn and liking  a broad specturm of culture was normal for me in my family. So in the song when De La Soul talks about simply being who they are and not just copying the people around them I grew to have a certain respect for the message they bring in the song. Plus, the beat is fly. 🙂

For the first 10 years of my life I believed that this incredible song was written by my uncle. He played it for me by every  night that he put me to sleep, which was about five times a week. It became my personal theme song, one that  i would sing hum  constantly, even before being able to understand its meaning. When I was older and smart enough to realize that this is song  was not written for  my own personal pleasure but  rather a very popular hit from a celebrated artist I was floored. And when I finally listened to the real Cat Stevens version I was almost moved to tears by how in love with it I fell.

The song is about finding your freedom through your individuality. About doing what you want,  no matter what anyone thinks or says. It soft sounds and upbeat chorus help you to understand the happiness that can come to you when you stop living your life by other peoples standards and stick to your own. Till this day, listening to this song gives me the courage to pursue happiness in itself, rather than fame or wealth or prestige.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBLVw92feas

Harland  County, USA is  documentary film that covers the Brookside Strike. Mining was the number one source of income in this little in Kentucky. In June 1972, the coal miners of Brookside began to strike against Duke Power Company and Union Mine Workers of America. The coal miners went on strike for safer working conditions, fair labor practices, and decent wages. Alot of coal miners were affected by the black lung disease. Violence was a big thing during the strike many of the Duke Power Company employees carried guns. Some of the protesters were even shot at. It was like if you you spoke up against or challenge the company you should fear for your life. Joseph Yablonski, an union representative who challenge Tony Boyle for the presidency of UMWA and lost was later found murdered along with his family in their home. The turning point though was when a young miner named Lawrence Jones was shot and killed during a scuffle.

“After a half century during which the incarceration rate had fluctuated only moderately in the mid-1970s it had begun to rise steeply.” (p. 339)

Freeman tells about the rising rate of violent offense and increase of crimes on the streets, many of which were directly born by the social conditions of the country. Civil Rights movement, even though improved many aspects of live of an ordinary African-American, still proved existing split of the society and segregation de facto. Which resulted in violent reaction from both groups – blacks and whites. Worsening economic conditions: rising rate of unemployment, rising inflation and taxes just added fuel to the fire. Some neighborhoods of America were hit especially hard (like South Bronx for an example). This all resulted in increased crime rates and drug usage.

In order to decrease crimes on the street Liberals tried to limit access to firearms, which resulted in federal gun control law in 1968. But they were not very successful in further legislating the gun control because of conservatives who were fighting against any gun control quoting the 2^nd Amendment. While the effort to limit access to firearms failed, the problem of the crime on the streets stayed open. The solution was to increase arrests and lengthen prison sentences. The idea was to keep the dangerous people off the streets. That is why the rate of arrests increased. Combined with social split, segregation de facto, the American prisons were overloaded mostly with African-Americans.

A second defining development during the half century  after World War Two was a multifaceted struggle to make democracy more meaningful. the United states fought World War Two, as it has fought most of its wars, in the name of democracy. But democracy had a very different meaning at that time than it would when the century ended. In the middle of the twentieth century, millions of Americans were denied basic citizenship rights. Formal political power was much less evenly distributed than it later would be, individual rights far less robust, and openly discriminatory rules and practices widespread. who could vote, how legislatures were constituted, who could use which public facilities, who was allowed to work in which kind of job, and how the criminal justice system operated all were very different in the mid 1940s than they would be a generation later. In businesses, families, schools and churches, on playing fields and in communities, the hierarchies of power and opportunity were structured by race, sex, religion, and ethnicity. Authority was wielded by fewer hands,  with fewer challenges and less consultation, than we now take for granted. Furthermore, the postwar struggle by African Americans for freedom, rights, and equality catalyzed a democratic revolution that transformed the United States and echoed around the world. Expanded notions of rights and democracy and new modes of political action spread from the struggle for racial justice to ever more arenas of American life, changing ideas and practices in local communities, national institutions, and intimate private relations.But even as this democratic revolution reached its peak, power began moving out of the public realm and into private ones, especially the corporate world.

after analysis of American Empire, after World War Two, American way of foreign policy and way of empiricism have been changed a lot. On later, it has impacted on rest of the world.