Author: Chenteng Ruan

This picture was taken on January 4, 2019, which was before the Covid-19 pandemic. It was around 7AM and I took this picture on my way to school. I didn’t really edit the picture because I want to highlight the beautiful view of the sky. I only changed the setting to vivid which made the picture a little brighter or more colorful. The purpose of this photo shows how much things have changed because of the pandemic. The picture was taken on the train, which was much safer before the pandemic. At the time, you actually felt safe on a subway and it was a place where you could listen to music and relax. Nowadays, many individuals view the subway system as unsafe, especially with the recent subway shooting incident. Looking at this picture, it might give the audience a sense of comfort because the world used to be a brighter and safer place.

The strategy I chose for revision is option 1 because I think I can expand and explain further on some parts of the essay. The exercise helped me explore some possible ideas I can still incorporate in one of my body paragraphs. The body paragraph I was working on contained some quotations about how the show Money Heist inspired real life protests. I think I can write more about how the issues people were protesting about are similar to the issues caused by neoliberalism. I can also connect back to the issue of economic inequality and perhaps include ideas about the lack of representation of minorities. The main thing I am struggling with right now is trying to connect the art I’m working out to real life events.

1. Reed is making connections between the 1978-1992 “retrenchment period” at CUNY and the Covid-19 pandemic by showing the cutting of budgets and termination of workers in both situations. In 1976, CUNY decided to charge tuitions after the desegregation of the university admission and laid off about 5000 faculties. The excuses they used to justify these actions were the“1973 international oil crisis and 1975 U.S. military defeat in Vietnam”. In 2020, we saw another budget cut that resulted in the laid-off of faculties, and students suffered “increased unemployment and danger of eviction.” The city claimed that they don’t have enough funds to support every service when in reality they hoarded the federal CARES Act money and “New York City historically has one of the wealthiest tax bases”.
2. Reed uses the term “death cult” to show the negative effects of the privatization of CUNY as it resulted in multiple injustices. The implementation of tuition costs in 1976 right after the degradation of university admission infringed the opportunities of minorities who were supposed to attend CUNY for free. The city also cut budgets that led to the laid-off the thousands of faculties in 2020 resulting in increased unemployment. Students were also facing financial struggles as a result of the pandemic of food and housing insecurities. Instead of helping the people, the city claimed they don’t have enough funds when they were totally capable of helping these individuals.
3. After reading the campaign to decolonize the Lehman College English Curriculum,  I realized that the students in this organization want to diversify the materials that are taught in the English courses. The students want fewer materials that are focused on British literature and more courses on Latinx and African American literature. The Lehman College is made up of mostly 53% Latinx and 30.3% African Americans students and they want to see “a reflection” of themselves in their education. Another goal they want to achieve through this campaign is also diversifying the faculty in the college as there is only one Latino tenure track faculty and no African American tenure track faculty in the department.

After reading the article Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Limits of Representation by Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor, I learned that black individuals especially black women are more likely to live in poverty because they are “one of the most oppressed and marginalized groups in the United States.” It is interesting to see the change of Joe Biden from 1988 to the modern-day as he went from demonizing black individuals as criminals to fighting for the justice of black individuals through Black Lives Matter and choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate. In 1993, Biden called black juvenile offenders “predators on our streets” and passed the 1994 Crime Bill that caused a spike in the incarceration of black individuals. This shows that Biden probably doesn’t actually support black individuals and he only said so for the purpose of gaining the votes of black voters. According to the author, “the limits of representation” means that just because a black person is elected to power, it doesn’t mean that he or she will fully understand the needs of the black community. During Obama’s term, “fifty-two percent of African Americans said that Obama’s policies had not gone far enough to improve their situation.” The same goes for the situation with Kamala Harris because she is wealthy with an estimated net worth of “six million dollars”. It is unreasonable to assume that an elected black official will make policies to support the poor black individuals because most individuals that are elected are wealthy. Being wealthy means that they will not understand the struggles of living in poverty and it is not guaranteed that they will policies to help the poor black individuals.

The art I chose is La Casa de Papel(Money Heist) by Alex Pina on May 2nd, 2017. The show is about a group of robbers led by the Professor to rob the Royal Mint of Spain and the Bank of Spain. Stealing money was not their only objective as they also did it to show resistance and oppose the capitalistic system of Spain. During their heists, they wore red suits and masks of Salvador Dali which is a sign of resistance and opposition. They were able to gain the support of civilians during their heists because they became the symbol of resistance and they did not kill any hostages during their heists. I think this art piece is trying to expose the issues with the capitalistic system since capitalism can lead to unemployment and economic inequality. It is also trying to encourage people to stand against injustices that are not limited to just government systems. One of the songs utilized in the show was Bella Ciao; it is was a song created by workers in the late 19th century to protest against harsh conditions and later sang by Italian partisans to oppose nazi fascism during World War 2.

I chose this work because it is one of my favorite TV shows. When I watched the show, I didn’t really think about the political and social side of it and simply watched it for the sake of entertainment. After the show, I realized that the show is more than just robbing banks in order to get rich. I hope to learn more about the political and social side of the show by doing research. A potential thesis statement is Alex Pina’s La Casa de Papel exposes the negative side of capitalism through the use of costumes, songs, and actions in order to encourage people to stand against injustices.

David Wojnarowicz’s “Unititled” utilized multiple rhetorical properties within his text to deliver a message to the readers that society went against him just because he was homosexual. In the text, he mentions that his sexuality caused him to lose his “home, civil rights, jobs, and all conceivable freedoms.” He utilized a photo of him as a kid with the text to appeal to the reader’s emotions by showing how an innocent kid will eventually have to face all these sufferings and injustice due to his sexuality. The use of repetition in his text such as “One day” and “this kid” helped the readers understand how much suffering he will have to face when he becomes an adult. One issue David Wojnarowicz’s text resonates within modern society is racism; people are treated differently based on the color of their skin. For example, Asian Americans, especially women and elders are being attacked for no reason. Some individuals made Asian Americans the scapegoat of the pandemic and used that as an excuse to brutally attack innocent civilians. Although the two topics are different, both subjects could be related to inequality since David Wojnarowicz and Asian Americans are blamed for something they don’t have control over. Art has a major impact on social and political concerns because it is an effective way to send messages. Throughout history, art was used to bring a change socially and politically. For instance,  we can use posters to expose the issues in society, we can use propaganda to convince people of certain ideas, and we can even use art to protest against something.

The way a paper is written, including the types of sentences used in it, has major effects on whether a reader will understand the paper. Repetitively writing one type of sentence in a paragraph will cause the readers to be disengaged and perhaps confused. A writer should always aim to balance the different types of sentences they use in their paper. In the two paragraphs I chose, I utilized all four types of sentences mentioned in the slides and the article. In the paragraphs, I wrote 6 complex sentences, 4 simple sentences, 3 compound sentences, and 2 complex compound sentences. The result reveals that I utilize complex sentences the most in my writing. I was a little surprised that I had 4 simples which I thought would be lower. Another thing I was surprised about was I had 6 complex sentences 3 compound sentences. I thought I would have the most number of compound sentences but it was probably due to that I wrote 4 simple sentences. The count of different sentence types will encourage me to limit the number of simple sentences within my writing. Perhaps I can combine some simple sentences and form compound sentences. These changes will enhance my writing because some simple sentences combined will make the piece of writing easier to read or flow better. In addition, I can also choose to explain more in those simple sentences to make them complexes, compounds, or even compound complexes. For the final paper, I think I will be focusing on explaining the quotes more and making the arguments more clearly for the readers to understand.

After reading Racial Capitalocene by Francoise Vergès and New York’s Invisible Climate Migrants by Sophie Kasakove, I learned that minorities tend to live in poorer conditions with various risks due to financial concerns. “Three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites”(Vergès). and “people of color make up the majority of those living in host neighborhoods within 3 km of the nation’s hazardous waste facilities”(Vergès). Living near waste sites could lead to health concerns since the neighborhoods in these areas are likely to be polluted due to the accumulation of wastes over time. Meanwhile in Canarsie, the neighborhood is unsafe due to the predictable floods that could occur at any time. Despite this, minorities were left with no choice but to live here since the rent in New York City is so expensive and they can not afford to live in normal neighborhoods. “In the Rockaways, in Queens, and Brooklyn’s Canarsie, the median asking rent is $1,837 and $2,000, respectively, compared with an overall median of $2,199 in Queens and $2,500 in Brooklyn, according to StreetEasy”(Kasakove). 

Instead of helping residents with their financial difficulties, FEMA increased the prices of flood insurances in order to “pull itself out of $20 billion debt”(Kasakove). The real estate was also taking advantage of this situation by offering cash to buy homeowners of Canarsie. Residents that sold their properties were forced to “move south, while others returned to the Caribbean islands they’d emigrated from”(Kasakove) because “[With] the house you sell here, you can’t afford anything anywhere”(Kasakove). This shows businesses only care about profits instead of helping the struggling minorities. Another example would be the genetically engineered trees in Racial Capitalocene which the company presents itself as a “leading global provider of conventional and next generation plantation trees”(Vergès) that cares about the environment. In reality, the company uses eucalyptus for profit in paper industries that “contribute to the depletion of water, desertification of soils, and loss of biodiversity”(Vergès).