The main reason why I like this blog is because the articles cycle around activism, and that's what this class is all about. It is also directed towards the younger generations. I hope you guys enjoy this. I am excited to hear what you guys think about this blog.
Heather Gorslin, Kevin Kim, Codie Owens, Michael Petrarca
The interface of the activist blog is interesting. It seems very organized and formal. There are no pop-ups or other distractions on the blog. The logo in the upper left hand corner is also interesting. It has a dark-colored hand and a light-colored hand shaking. I think this speaks to the left-wing viewpoint, and the support of President Obama. It also has a rose, but I am not sure what the message is behind that. I think the words in the heading that say “culture. consciousness. critical thought.” speak to the rhetoric of the blog. The blog seems to activate thinking deeply on political issues. The articles on this blog are a lot more complex than some of the articles on other blogs that we have seen. The background of the heading has protest signs which show that this is an activist blog as well. Each article has a simple picture that goes with it, too. Overall, this blog seems like it is designed for informed people who have strong political opinions about current issues. This blog isn't really designed to entertain or draw people in.
ReplyDeleteI read the article "The Center Cannot Hold." Throughout the article, it discuss background information to show a stronger stance on what the future should hold based on the past experiences. It has links to major topics such as poems being spoken about, and the sputnik movement. i think this is important because people reading may not know what the author is talking about and further research these topics. Obama himself uses the rhetoric of words such as "competitveness" and "winning the future" to try to encourage the U.S that we need to pull our of poor economic times and compete with CHina and India.
ReplyDelete@Kelsey- I really appreciate the insight. you're right, the sight somewhat does leave some holes to be filled in by more informed people.
ReplyDelete@Susan- sounds like an interesting article; you know what they say:being well versed in the past helps us from making the same mistakes in the future. did you further research these topics?
This blog is definitely a place where excellent editors make great efforts to maintain and develop. It focuses mainly on political issues and provides series of discussions updating news and enriching ideas. I've read an article called "What You’re Not Hearing About Haiti (But Should Be)". It concludes critical connections between the huge loss in the earthquake in Haiti and US reforming policies before that. This article provides descriptive details and deep analysis of the revolution in Haiti under USAID's reformation project and failure to sustainably develop the country, which lead to a much greater loss than it should have had. This article calls for people's attention of looking inside the disasters, rather than only feeling sorry and simply giving away money. US government has been trying a lot to help Haiti out, but it just needs to care more about the people there, instead of making profits from the project for itself.
ReplyDeleteI read on the blog titled " Prison of the Possible " and I found that Michael Harrington, the founder of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)created a political home for socialists in the left wing of the Democratic party, the trade unions, and all of the myriad social movements traditionally associated with broadly progressive politics so as to shift the center of American politics to the left. I can see that the bulk of the Democratic party was still committed to egalitarian social welfare liberalism.I found out that today, the political situation is dramatically different. Outside of a small and marginalized remnant, the Democratic party has abandoned any commitment it had to broadly egalitarian social policy.
ReplyDeleteWhen trying to find an article to write about, I found it very difficult to find one that I found interesting and easy to read. As someone said earlier, I felt that this website was less about drawing people in. It seemed as though you could relate more to these articles if you were informed about some of the topics beforehand. I thought this was very different from the last blogs because there were topics that anyone could relate to. On this website I felt like there were a lot less posts to read. One of the articles I clicked on had mostly quotes and barely any commentary. I'm not bashing this website because I think its informative and formal, but I guess I like the more appealing and advertising blog websites a little more.
ReplyDeleteIn the newly posted article “Remembering Malcolm”, the author mainly talks about his hope towards the coming biography of Malcolm X as well as his own opinion about Malcolm X. According to the author, though regarded as an anticapitalist rather than a socialist, Malcolm’s theory shares a lot in common with that of Marx’s, the father of socialism. Considering the matter of how to put Malcolm X in the right position, the author hopes the biography to elaborate on Malcolm’s dealings with radicals and socialists of all stripes. From this article, I realize this blog is quite different from other “activist” blogs which spend tons of word to persuade people “on their track”. “The activist”, as its subtitle described, is something about “consciousness” and “critical thinking”. It offers audiences a more objective prospective to think over those activists as well as activities themselves instead of planting ideas in their minds.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the home page I could definitely tell that this blog site was for mature audiences. There is basically no color present except for the title which is mainly black and white with a hint of red. I like the rhetoric the blog uses by placing a picture of a darker skin and a lighter skin hand shaking and next to it is the title "the activist" and right underneath the words culture.consciousness.critical thought. I found it interesting that even though this blog site is sponsered by the Young Democratic Socialist the color they used in the title is red which is the color associated with the republican party.
ReplyDeleteOn this blog, I noticed when I opened it that the frequency of blog post publishing was not very high. Posts were spread days apart from each other, which is unlike the previous blogs we have looked at. I read an article titled "Salmaan Taseer and the Crisis of Pakistani Liberalism". It was about the murder of Salmaan Tasreer, who was the liberal governor of Punjab. He was killed because he was an advocate for freedom of speech. He was in opposition to Pakistan’s already existing infringements upon free speech and religious expression. He was defending a Christian woman who was sentenced to death under the country's blasphemy law. Pakistan is one of the strictest countries when it comes to blasphemy laws. The rhetoric of the blog entry is effective in my opinion. I think that the author does a good job of describing the complete issue before commenting on it. The situation is thoroughly explained before the author commends the liberals who are protesting and describes the dark future of Pakistan. I like the way the overall blog is setup and wish that there were more posts to read since I like the authors' writing.
ReplyDelete@meng- very good point. people get so caught up in wanting to help that they give their money away willingly without having enough knowledge of the topic. their hearts are in the right place, and sometimes that's their downfall
ReplyDelete@YJ- sounds pretty interesting. did you get that knowledge from the article? or did you do a personal search to learn more?
@Rosie- hey some blogs aren't for everyone. but what did you think of the rhetoric in the blog? or the layout?
@Colleen- that's awesome that you recognized that. I myself cannot stand when people tell me what to think. one of my favorite aspects about this blog is its objectiveness
@Nia- fantastic inference with the color scheme! done on purpose or not?
@Rishab- sounds like quite an interesting blog post! just by reading your submission I feel influenced so i can only imagine what the rhetoric in the actual post was like
ReplyDeleteThe blog I read was called "The 2000's: Interesting times" I found this article to be funny honestly because it is leading the article talking about how the 1990's were so good with things like the economy then 2000 hit and it begins with the "Decade of Disaster" saying that it started when Al Gore lost to Bush in the election and then bush pushed for a war in iraq because of "weapons of mass destructions" which the Al Queda did not posses. It keeps going but the article is basically ripping bush a new one and blaming him for the 2000's
ReplyDeleteI read the article “Prisoners on Strike” from this week’s blog, which talked about the “fundamental illegitimacy of the prison system.” The article brought out the question of whether prisons should even exist. Readers are informed of some of the treatment and conditions in different prisons such as supermax prisons and Idaho Department of Corrections. The article provided a lot of embedded links to other articles having to do with the same issue. Like just about all of the other blogs we’ve looked at, a single picture is shown right above the beginning of the articles. The color red seems to be a prominent color on this site. It is seen in the rose on the bolgs symbol of the two shaking hands as well as behind the blogs title where you see what looks to be a protest scene with a bunch of signs reading, “I am a man.” This blog does seem to be written to a more mature audience and is informative of present issues without so much being a call to action.
ReplyDeleteI accidently posted on the wrong blog here it is.....I read an article that was related to the devestating earthquake in Haiti last year called "What You’re Not Hearing About Haiti (But Should Be)". I want to first start out by saying how much I enjoyed this website and its layout. It was easy to navigate and pleasant on the eyes. Just looking through other articles you could tell how neutral they were on these subjects. They weren't there to take a position on these issues rather just inform people. Anyway, the article I read was about why the country of Haiti was so poor and because of their living conditions the earthquake affected them a lot more than it should have. It talked about how the US was using Haiti as sort of an experiment in economics. The US tried to facilitate Haiti into a basically export-only kind of country. It ruined the country side and over populated the cities and most importantly impoverished the country. If this is true I can not agree with what the US is doing. I liked the site and the material that was in it.
ReplyDeleteLooking at this blog, I find it to be very plain and not appealing to me. I like to see a lot of colors when I look at a website because it keeps me interested. Also, the content is something one must know a lot about so I guess if you are passionate about a certain topic then it would be easy to follow this blog. Otherwise, if you pick a random topic you want to learn more about then it might be hard to comprehend.
ReplyDeleteApparently my post from last night did not go through, but here is the jist of what I had written earlier. The activist blog has a very appealing motto - culture, consciousness, and critical thought. I think that this is the key to analysing situations presented to us everyday. I read an article entitled, "Defining 'organizing' in the Internet Age." The author, Mark Engler, looks so use analytical but underlyingly persuasive rhetoric to explain how activists must organize. Mr. Engler writes very plainly, as if he was having a conversation with a friend. He explains the misconseptions of activist organization. In fact, most of his rhetoric is used to say how not to organize. Very little is said about how to organize. Overall he makes good points about how the medium of information has an enormous impact on the quality of information presented.
ReplyDeleteI completely forgot to do this weeks blog review, hopefully I can still make up for it by doing it now.
ReplyDeleteI read "For Egyptians, Revolution Not Reform." Egyptians want change for their country and their president stepping down from office isn't enough to satisfy them. The police force has been using violence to control their protests; however, the army has been protecting the Egyptian people. Not only are the muslims trying to get rid of the Mubarak regime, the christians are helping them out. The Egyptians are obviously tired of their current government's tyranny. But, what will happen after the revolution is over? There was no sole leader of this protest.
I read "The Revolution Still Wont Be Televised." This article touches on how social networks are playing such a huge part in oraganizing political movements and othere activist movements. Using there own group as an example the Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) used our Facebook group to find new contacts. From which they were able to build several of their strongest chapters through this kind of outreach. They cite that this has also caused problems as activists have started to believe the Internet has replaced proven old-school techniques. They use unions as an example stating that while you may have a many followers or friends on twitter and facebok how many of these people do you actually feel comfortable going out for a drink with. Because of this lack of a personal relationship activist groups are having a hard time forming and truely organizing according to this blog.
ReplyDeleteI read the article "Organizing the Egyptian Revolution"(http://theactivist.org/blog/organizing-the-egyptian-revolution), and found that the article has a interesting argument about the truth of saying that Egyptian protests is “spontaneous” and “leaderless”. The writer points out that the erupt that labeled "spontaneous" is because of the ignorance of media, and this type of protest must has years of organizing and preparation. However, the writer also mentions that the protest is decentralized and people who would otherwise not have dreamed of taking part in an uprising may rush onto the streets. When I was reading the article, One thing iv figured out is the contrast between Chinese political view and American political view. In China, the big protests like the one happenning Egypt are usually banned and most of the people even don't know them. However, as iv seen from here, American people can even discuss with their own opinions online. Although i somehow agree with the Chinese politicians that these kind of information may cause the upheaval in China, i still think that people have the right to talk about all the political issues openly.
ReplyDeleteBeing sponsored by the Young Democratic Socialists, I believe it is safe to assume the audience of this blog. What is nice is that it does not seem to be too biased – it doesn’t alienate people who are not part of the YDS. The article I read was called “The Twilight of Capitalism?” from the Theory section, and was posted in December. It uses historical references to build credibility, and includes discussion from Marxist Communist ideals both historical and modern. The modern writings are by David Harvey. What is perhaps the most interesting is how the post brings up the disadvantages the U.S. is experiencing compared to China, due to the structure of our economy. We are not able to quickly invest, and we are certainly experiencing infrastructure issues as a result. Meanwhile China is mobilizing their labor force to introduce new technology, roads, buildings, etc. The rhetoric behind talking about China and their advancements possibly has the intention of waking up Americans and telling them they need to do something if they want to keep the U.S. as #1. It works as a rallying cry, really.
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