Author: Fatima Zubair

I took this photo in July of 2020, during the BLM protests in Manhattan. The words “No Justice No Peace” were written on the City Hall building. I edited it to make it more bright so the words could be read easily. The target audience would be the citizens of America since we need to work on our country’s mindset before moving on to a greater audience. I believe the bright lighting of the photo makes more people want to look at it because it’s more attention grabbing. I also increased the saturation so the pink writing would pop more, making it more noticeable. Lastly, I increased the vignette so the edges would be slightly darker, allowing the focus to be on the writing on the door. Whether or not someone knows this building is City Hall, I think the photo makes it clear that it’s an important building, which makes a statement. I want a message to be sent that there truly will not be peace until there is fairness and justice, so I think these editing elements pull that together.

The strategy that I chose was number 5, “to restructure your essay and discover new ideas in the process.” I chose this strategy because I tend to be very repetitive when I’m writing long papers. I wanted to test it out with my second paragraph, so I broke it up and rearranged it. I realized I had good sentences, but they could be even better if they were in a different order. I always follow a basic structure, so mixing it up made the paragraph easier to read for me. I was able to get rid of information that I was repeating, giving my writing a better flow. Right now, I’m struggling with how to organize all my different ideas, but I think keeping this exercise in mind will help me blend my thoughts together.

1. The connections that Reed is making between the 1978-1992 “retrenchment period” at CUNY and the Covid-19 pandemic is the similarity of death. In the 1978-1992 “retrenchment period,” there was a death of free education throughout CUNY. This was devastating because of how many people it impacted. It completely changed a lot of students’ lives. Reed then connects this to the Covid-19 pandemic by emphasizing how there was actual death occurring at CUNY. It wasn’t just a figure of speech at this point, and he uses this again to emphasize how the pandemic impacts so many students. Both points were made to show the negative effects. During both times, many CUNY workers lost their jobs and many CUNY students lost their education.
2. Reed uses the term “death cult” in the context of emphasizing the way CUNY changed. He uses this term to show how CUNY, something that was once known for being free and accessible, became part of neoliberal America. The people who turn public spaces into privately owned businesses are part of the death cult that Reed is referring to. I think this means we lost another thing to money and power. The cult has privatized many things, including education.
3. For both anti-racist and anti-austerity groups at CUNY, Reed suggests that they come together to share ideas instead of focusing on themselves. He says all the programs at CUNY colleges should discuss their feelings and beliefs with each other in order to have more of an affect on the CUNY environment. By bringing all the colleges together, the message could be louder and bigger.

The CUNY of my dreams —

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1P_YmingRR5lel2ugy_pGa8fwHhJYn2AeNZW9ntp7KCc/edit?usp=sharing

 

After reading Keeanga-Yamahatta’s “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Limits of Representation”, I realized how some people simply don’t get represented. This article focused on how black women specifically never get the chance to be heard, or have any type of power. There were several points made by the author that showed this. For instance, when she said, “Nearly a quarter of Black women live under the official poverty line.” She continues, “twenty-nine per cent of Black children live under the poverty line and that another fifty-seven per cent are classified as low-income are dark reminders that inequality in this country is deeply bound up with race and gender.” These statistics are eye opening on how no one in this world seems to look out for black women. Seeing that there’s now a black woman holding such big power shows that we’re making progress. I believe the author says the “limits of representation” are race, gender, and social status. If you’re a lower class black female, chances are you won’t be represented by people in power. The author talks about how the people in this category are constantly let down and underrepresented. I agree with her thoughts because even today, despite being a woman of color, Kamala Harris doesn’t truly understand the struggle of black women because she has money and power. I thought this was a really interesting article, and Keeanga-Yamahatta’s point of view was similar to mine.

For my art piece, I chose the tv show “Gossip Girl” created by Josh Schwartz. This show was broadcasted for 6 seasons on the CW channel from September 19, 2007 to December 17, 2012. This show is about a group of trust fund babies living on the Upper East Side. It also shows the less wealthy kids of New York, living in Brooklyn. This show explores their lives starting in high school, going through college, and ending years later when they’re all settled down. Although this show is very entertaining to watch, it also addresses capitalism, the social hierarchy, and stereotypes. This piece of art shows several examples of how people in power use money to get what they want. It also shows how there’s a hierarchy created in our society and how different people in that hierarchy are treated differently depending on their standing. I think this piece is trying to say there’s different classes in New York, and it can be difficult to get them to blend. The piece focuses on these two different worlds and how they clash.

I chose this particular piece of art because I was recently rewatching the show, and I realized how much they focus on social standing. I felt like this was a great example of power and capitalism, two very real things in New York. I think I’ll be able to elaborate on these different problems, but also enjoy it while I’m writing. The show can exaggerate a lot of different things, but that just adds to the problems we see in New York. The way rich people get things handed to them, while others are left to deal with the scraps. I thought this would be really interesting to look deeper into. A potential thesis statement is, Josh Schwartz’s “Gossip Girl” attempts to expose the truth about the rich people of New York. The picture I attached shows how these rich people are literally on top of the city, symbolizing their wealth and ruling. These are the main characters of the show.

1. Greg Bordowitz’s “Pandemic Haiku” dives deep into the pandemic. The piece maintains a serious tone, and has a minimalistic design. These rhetorical properties contributes to the poem’s meaning because it shows how people felt during the beginning of the pandemic. The serious tone and grey color give gloomy and sad vibes. The poem overall discusses the affects of the pandemic on people, depicting what it would look like from day to day. Every day blended into the next, and the rhetorical properties emphasizes this point.
2. This text resonates with social concerns of the present because many people are still struggling to get back to normal life after the pandemic. This piece shows how everyone was living the same day over and over, and now everyone seems to be lost. Towards the end, Bordowitz talks about the long term affects of the pandemic saying, “Long haulers suffer Fatigue confusion short breaths For several months.” Many people find it difficult to get back to regular life because of both mental and physical reasons, and this poem shows that.
3. Through this text, we can see how art can make impacts on social or political concerns. This specific piece of art focused on the pandemic, which we’re still going through, and it made a statement on how we live our lives. This is an example of how art can be so relevant to social and political concerns because writers use their own voices to speak for the rest of the people. Artist’s also use their own experience, as well as others’, in order to send an accurate message.

As I completed my sentence analysis with my draft, I realized I use simple and compound sentences a lot. Those were my main two styles, and it didn’t really surprise me. Whenever I write, I tend to either get straight to the point, thus the simple sentences, or I explain my thoughts in depth — the compound sentences. These reveal to me that I’m always writing everything the same way. I don’t mix it up, which can make my work harder to read. Seeing how often I use these two types of sentences, I know I’m going to change it as I continue with my final draft. I want to mix styles more, and not just have my whole essay be in one tone. I think this would also make my ideas flow better because I won’t have to organize all of my thoughts a certain way. For example, if I use different sentence styles and add either more independent or dependent clauses, I can create more of a variation of my ideas. This will allow me to explore my own style of writing to see what works best for me, instead of just sticking with my old habits. I also plan on making my paragraphs longer by elaborating more on my ideas. Adding in complex-compound sentences, for example, will help me achieve my goal of expanding my thoughts. Similarly, I have some sentences that I need to shorten, but still make them impactful, so adding more complex sentences would help me with that.

Living in certain areas and being a certain race can determine how well your quality of life will be. While reading “Racial Capitalocene” by Francoise Vergès, and “New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants” by Sophie Kasakove, I realized how race affects housing. In Francoise’s piece, she discusses how race is linked to global warming and climate change. Francoise talks about how there is a lot of toxic waste dumped in lower class communities, consisting of mainly blacks and hispanics. She argues that global warming is affecting these specific races much more than it is other races. In her article she states, “It showed that race was the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States and that the siting of these facilities in communities of color was the intentional result of local, state, and federal land-use policies.” Although this is extremely unfair, this is how it’s always been, and the author is bringing attention to it.

Similarly, Sophie Kasakove argues in her text that housing is harder to obtain for black families. Sophie discussed the different prices of houses in different areas, but came back to elaborate that it’s not easy for black people to keep their houses, as rent keeps increasing in those areas. She talked specifically about Canarsie and how this area is made up of mostly black people. Although it was full of life at one point, over the years it has become less populated and more foreclosures occurred. In her article she states,”Even before Sandy, though, it wasn’t easy to keep a home in these neighborhoods. Targeted intensely by subprime lenders during the housing bubble, they have consistently had some of the highest foreclosure rates in the city. But after Sandy, it became even harder; the government programs designed to help people with recovery costs have been notoriously inadequate.” This shows how the government doesn’t care to assist the already suffering people of Canarsie and other neighborhoods, but more about driving them away.

These articles both contain a similar theme — finding and maintaining a place to live as a black person in a black neighborhood can be extremely difficult. Many of these black neighborhoods are neglected and underdeveloped, leaving the residents to take care of it themselves. Although the first article focused more on climate change, and the second article discussed pricing, both articles explained how black neighborhoods aren’t being taken care of like they should be. Living in New York, we’re able to see the way certain areas are extremely different than other areas, despite being handled by the same government.