This reminds me of a documentary I watched last year. Everyone talks about the feminist movement, but in it, many minorities were left behind within it. It felt as though black feminists were forced to chose between advocating for their own civil rights or advocating for their gender rights. It's easy to forget that women of color had to struggle a lot more than white women even though both of them reached major obstacles. Also, it saddens me that there seemed to be a disconnect between the feminist movements.

I knew that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had differing views, but I was not aware that each form of protest was against the other. I think that doing this is counterintuitive to what they are both trying to achieve. Does polarizing a protest really help to situation in anyway?

This part was interesting to me because he is able to highlight that America not what it once was. The government needs new involvement in order to be successful. This reminds me of a video that we watched in international studies. The economy hasn't been critiqued in centuries because people are accused of being communists and things like that. However, without critiquing it and trying to treat the economy as the same as it was a long time ago, a large recession is inevitable.

It took me a couple reads and a couple google searches for me to understand this piece. By apposing the "Gold Standard" Jennings was able to advocate for the average working class citizen. In all honestly, I don't completely understand the gold standard, but I believe that it causes a deflation of their currency, and overall less currency within the market. I believe that this causes a gap between the rich and poor? I'm not 100% sure in all honesty.

Douglass does an exceptional job in first connecting with his people. He talks about the past the brave characteristics our founding fathers had and how lucky all of the citizens are to have had the luck to have people like this behind them. By connecting to his audience first, rather than bombarding them and accusing them, those listening to his speech will hear what he has to say because they are now connected to each other. It's an us not a me versus them.

It aggravates me that the law has always been used to subtly repress people of their choosing. Even today, through the use of private prisons, minorities are still targeted and forced to not only enter a never ending cycle that usually has them end up back in prison, but into an endless cycle of poverty. The First-Amendment should be applied to all minorities. Although many think that they already are. By looking at today's climate, minorities are being attacked more than ever on a catastrophic scale.

This part stood out to me because we have also been discussing this within our international studies class. This can be applied to today. Since we are in a capitalistic economy that focuses on the product rather than the people that make it, we no longer value the laborers. This has caused the working class to begin to disappear. Those who do produce our products now are thousands of miles away. Because of this, they are able to be abused by their employer and none of us give it a second thought when we wear our shoes or other products produced in large factories. This mistreatment of workers goes unnoticed and will continue to unless we become aware of how we over consume.

This part popped out to me because of how he stemmed away from talking about his refusal to pay his tax, and into his treatment in the jail. Although I found it odd that he expressed feelings of perseverance, I did find it important of him talking about how punishment like that is unnecessary. He is one of the first that I know of to bring up the mistreatment of prisoner's and how it is childish.

The repetition of "were" stands out to me. It stands to show was use to be in no longer. That during the revolution we rang the bells of freedom while in reality, we had no freedom ourselves. That the idea of America is not the correct one. Due to the mass amount of slavery, our ideals were skewed and our dark secrets are finally being revealed to the masses. That we must do more than just dream and have hopes of change, we must make the change ourselves.

I like the way that this is described. I personally believe that individual rights should be given up to put more faith within the government to benefit the most amount of people. In doing this, the different sections of government are able to put more accountability to other departments which actually creates a greater guarantee of their rights.

This portion interested me because he does not only refute the idea of creating one vast government compared to individual states, he also calls for a concise proposal of how this should be attained. He calls out those who support having a nationally structured government and states that when it comes to incorporating states rights, none of them have a clear response of how to fix that.

I think part is interesting because of how he is able to connect with the people. He in no way tries to highlight his intelligence or say how he knows all. He explains that there is a lot that he has no idea about and it is better to have an understanding of that, rather than to act like you do.

This portion was powerful to me because it talks of ways that men of this time have not only oppressed women through law, but through social normalities as well. Women have been subjected to irrational standards for decades. Body image and intelligence have always been a target to women. Even though today we have made great strides in promoting a more accepting social climate, we are still facing battles when it comes to our reproductive rights.

This could be carried on to today. Many people do not feel as though they are rightfully represented within the American government system. So many powerful organizations are controlling who is getting elected through insane amounts of campaign donations. It feels as though this idea of representation of citizens is starting to die off.

Even at the beginning, I find this ironic. Native American tribes were pushed off of their homeland and were mass slaughtered, but Thomas Jefferson is highlighting all the wrongs that the king did. It's weird to me that they were able to look over these tragic events so quickly. How can a person call for a freedom that he denied to others.

This part jumped out at me because of the way that our government operates today. Although it is to a less extreme account than of England, the United States grants the President with the right to call for an executive order. Not only this, but the use of lobbying causes many of our elected officials to be plagued by large companies. This causes them to vote for personal gain rather than for the people. My question is, is what Thomas Paine saying about England connect to America today?

This part interested me because of the fact that the barons put in a set of standards in case they were the ones who were causing the injustices. In most cases, the opposite party simply states their grievances and then talks of what they will do if their standards are not met. But in the Magna Carta, the people acknowledge that mistakes will be made and creates a clear plan of how they intend on fixing it.

This part confused me in all honesty. At the beginning of the text, it laid the scene to what I thought was going to be an argument of the different ways to rule a state. Otanes showed valid arguments against monarchies but the men still went with a monarchy. The worst part about this in my opinion is that the way they're picking a ruler is even more bizarre than if they would have created a democracy and had the people vote.