The Freedom Writers Diary: Change Is Within Our Reach, All We Have To Do Is Stretch

While laying sprawled out on my floor this afternoon doing my issues homework, with my friend doing her English homework on the couch, we both came across very inspiring quotes about change. She read a poem out loud to me titled, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, written by T. S. Eliot, and I was struck by how perfectly it related to the journal entry I was in the middle of from Freedom Writers. The line that really stuck out to me was, "In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." I kept re-playing that line in my head over and over again. What an incredibly powerful idea! In just a minute, you could change the world. In just one minute you could alter a million lives completely, for better or worse. And in just a minute, that opportunity could be gone. We all have the power to change the world around us, but we have to dedicate the time and effort to do it. We have to be willing to risk everything for change and we can not waste any time. Hannah stopped me in the middle of my reading of Diary entry 43 to read this poem to me, and ironically, Entry 43 was about the poem Moment, by Vincent Guilliano, which is all about determining the importance of change. Ms. Gruwell asked her class a very intriguing question. She asked, "If you could live an eternity and not change a thing or exist for the blink of an eye and alter everything, what would you choose?" (87). There are obvious pros and cons to each option even without reading the poem, but after reading what this question was based off of, I realized that there was a whole other element to this question. The poem said:

Let him wish his life

For the sorrows of a stone

Never knowing the first thread

Of these

Never knowing the pain of ice

As its crystals slowly grow

Needles Pressing in on the heart

To live forever

And never feel a thing

To wait a million lifetimes

Only to erode and become sand

Wish not for the stone

But for the fire

Last only moments

but change everything

Oh to be lightning

To exist for less than a moment

Yet in that moment

To expose the world to every open eye

Oh to be thunder

To clap and ring

To rumble into memories

Minds and spines

To chill the soul and shake the very ground

Pounding even the sand

Into smaller pieces

Or the mountain

Brooding, extinct

Yet gathering for one fatal moment

The power to blow the top clean off the world

Oh to last the blink of an eye and leave nothing

but nothing unmoved behind you

This poem is not simply about deciding whether or not change matters, but it is about asking yourself how much you would be willing to sacrifice to bring about change. To bring about a real change in the world, to dedicate your life to making change, chances are you will miss out on a million opportunities that others experience in life. When a scientist dedicates himself to finding a cure for cancer, he spends every waking moment in his lab conducting research. He misses his children's dance recitals and baseball championships. He misses the moments of joy and the moments of heart break. He sacrifices his personal life completely to give every fiber of his being to the cause. He surrenders his own selfish desires for the chance of saving the lives of complete strangers. He chooses to do so. When a reporter travels to a war zone to uncover the truth about a war or genocide, she risks her own life for the story. She puts herself in deadly situations to discover the details behind the war. She risks her safety and potentially risks her life for the chance to expose the true evil behind the war and find justice. These people risk everything for the complete strangers in the world around them. From reading this poem, I, along with the students in Ms. Gruwell's class, learned that it is worth the ultimate sacrifice to change the world. When you see injustice, you must do everything within your power to put an end to it otherwise the world will continue to turn into the corrupt, cruel world that it already become. If nobody is willing to put their own needs aside in order to dedicate the time and effort to making change, there really is nothing in this world worth living for. You could stay on this earth for eternity without seeing change, and then what would you be left with? Nothing but misery and pain and destruction. I would rather be on this planet for only the blink of an eye and solve one true horror in the world, like ending the use child soldiers, than stay on this planet for eternity and do nothing to change it into a better world.

The Freedom Writers Diary: Another World Just Outside Our Doors

Reading The Freedom Writers Diary has completely changed my view on America. I always hear stories on the news and in school about the horrible violence going on in other countries. I am constantly hearing about the monstrosities occurring in Uganda with Invisible Children and about the ongoing attacks in nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. It is rare, however, that I hear stories of the violence occurring within my own nation. I live in a safe, upscale community where I don't have to worry about being shot on my way to school or gunned down at the gas station. I am blessed to live in such a sheltered community but I let that make me ignorant of the violence and heart break that kids my age, in my country, and even in my state, are suffering from. The Freedom Writers Diary has opened my eyes to the reality of this nation. The students who wrote this book were fighting a war. Not a war like the ones going on overseas in Africa or Iraq, but the kind of war that goes undeclared and ignored by the government. A war where kids are killing kids for no other reason than the color of their skin, their family's origin, or their religious affiliations. All across America, gang violence is taking the lives of hundreds, even, thousands, of innocent children. This is a world that I never was able to understand, and perhaps never will be able to if I never experience it first hand, but thanks to these students' incredible bravery and willingness to open up to complete strangers, I am able to understand this undeclared war among America's youth better than ever before.
Within the first few diary entries, it became clear that the teenagers I was reading about were experiencing a completely different adolescence than I had ever known. It was an entry from a young boy, talking about the death of his best friend. One of the most frightening parts of the entry was that this was not a shocking and tragic event in his community. I learned this right off the bat when he wrote that "Someone said, 'Not another one,' while his friends were swearing that they would get revenge. 'An eye for an eye… payback's a bitch.'" (14). A young boy, still in the prime of life, had just been murdered and to the community it was just another death; another opportunity for violence. There have been several accidents in the last few years in Deerfield that have taken the lives of teenagers and almost every member of this town could say the name of the girl or boy who died, a brief description of who they were and what they were like, as well as the story of how they died. In Deerfield, the death of a minor is a tragedy that sticks with the community and is remembered for years. It was difficult to wrap my mind around the idea of this being a common occurrence in a neighborhood. The writer of this journal entry went on to describe the scene of the murder and what it was like to find his best friend dead. He wrote, "They didn't know that he was my friend and that he had this whole life ahead of him. He was gunned down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn't pay attention to what they were saying. I just stood there, looking at my friend's blood on the floor. He had never harmed anyone is his entire life. What were his parents going to do? What was I going to do?" (15). Thousands of kids all across America see these kinds of sights in the first few years of their lives. They see their friend's blood splashed across the pavement and know that their best friend's life was taken simply to show that one gang has more power than another. One senseless death after another and it makes no difference to the person who killed them. I thank God that I do not have to live in this kind of fear of losing my best friends or my sister at any moment simply for crossing the street. I had only just begun reading the touching stories of Erin Gruwell's students, but already I could tell that this book was one that would stick with me; one that would teach me the truth about the nation I live in; expose me to the life I could have had simply by being born just a few dozen miles away, in the gang violence that destroys the youth of Chicago.

The Two Sides of Abortion

The NARAL-Prochoice America website is much more applealing than the National Right to Life website. Right off the bat, it provides the reader with information and evidence about their side of the debate without even having to click on any other links or pages. It draws the reader in by providing short and easy information about the issue at hand and what obsticles the "pro-life" group is putting in the way of women who want to get abortions. Both websites are clearly biased towards their side and are using their sites to sway people to agree with their oppinions and to think negitively about the opponent's point of view. There are very few images or visually appealing aspects the the National Right to Life website or specific quotes. However, they do have some very persuasive facts such as the stages of the pregnancy that each part of the baby develops. This also prevents people from feeling personally connected to the point of view that is being presented. NARAL-Prochoice America's website is full of easy to read information presented through short paragraphs and bulletpoints. I definitely think that the NARAL-Prochoice America website is much more effective than the National Rights to Life because it gets more personal and is easier to relate to as a young woman. It explains the many obsticles that are placed in the way of girls who are seeking abortion and makes a very strong argument for why woman should have this right to choose for themselves.

Personally, I am prochoice. I think it is a woman's right to do what she wishes with her body when it is her life that is being effected the most. Nobody should be able to make that decision for her. She will have to live with her actions, whatever path she chooses, and nobody should have the power to make that choice for her. I strongly disagree with the idea that a girl must tell her parents and have their consent in order to get an abortion. If her parents are pro-life, they can force her into parenthood and take away the right she is constitutionally guaranteed. There are also different dynamics between child and parent in every family and the state doesn't know how the parents will react to the news of their teenage daughter being pregnant. It could lead the parents to punish or abuse the daughter for her actions and this violence would be the result of the state supposedly "helping" teenagers. The pro-choice website only encouraged this opinion in me because it brought even more issues of control to the surface. There are far too many laws and restrictions set in place for women seeking abortions and this website elaborated on the problem even more.

I believe that the responsible thing to do in most circumstances would be to inform the father about the pregnancy, but I don't believe it should be mandatory and I certainly don't believe that the woman should have to have the man's consent to get the abortion. It is the woman's body that is in jeopardy. If the woman feels that an abortion truly is the only solution, then she shouldn't have to ask the man's approval to do what she knows is right. Additionally, if the woman was raped, she should never be forced to speak to the man who raped her again, and she certainly should not have to ask his permission to rid herself of his spawn. Because there is no way to prove what the exact circumstance is every time, the state shouldn't have the power to make these decisions for her.

I see that Illinois has several laws set in place to help low-income woman who seek family-planning assistance or who seek abortion. Illinois also requires all pharmacies to provide birth control for women. I think these are both very important and responsible actions that the state has taken to help protect woman and their rights. However, I strongly disagree with many of the pro-life or anti-choice laws. It is not fair for certain health service facilities to have the right to not inform woman of their rights to get an abortion, to not provide information on where they can get an abortion, or for certain doctors to have the right to refuse to perform abortions on the woman. Doctors should have the right to give their advice and opinion to their patients, but not the right to make the decision for them. I am most definitely pro-choice.

Death Penalty Abolished In Illinois

I could not agree more with the decision to abolish the death penalty in Illinois. Throughout this unit, we have heard  both sides of argument about the justice level of capital punishment and it has forced me to question my beliefs and changed my opinion several times. Before we began learning about the death penalty, I did not have a very concrete opinion that swayed me towards one way or another. The truth of the matter was, I was not educated on the highly controversial debate and was just going off of the opinions of my parents. They are both in favor of the death penalty and believe that an eye for an eye is only fair. I simply accepted this belief and went along with it without question. Soon after we began learning about the death penalty in class, however, my opinion quickly changed.
A life for a life is revenge, it is not justice. The United States sets an example of what is morally acceptable and is supposed to do what is in the best interest of all American citizens. The fact is, capital punishment does more harm and it does good. We learned that several decades ago, the death penalty was taken off the table completely. The country ruled that the current laws for it were too loose and allowed for too many people to be put to death without reasonable cause. Soon after this decision was made, many states began altering their laws for the death penalty and put it back into action. There was a handful of states, however, that continued to reject capital punishment and never reinstated the possibility for execution by the state.
There are two very popular quotes among people who are against the death penalty. Many people believe that "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." This is in reference to the lesson that capital punishment teaches. If we punish murder with murder, we are only causing more death in the country and going against our goal of protecting citizens. This brings me to the second popular quote which mocks the idea of capital punishment by saying, "We kill people to show that killing people is wrong." This makes it perfectly clear how ridiculous the idea of execution is and that it completely goes agains the moral conduct of the United States of America. Even family members of victims of murder agree that killing their loved one's killer will do them no good. It will not bring back to life the person that was lost, or fill the hole in their hearts where this person once was. But even Emit Till's mother, after her young son was brutally murdered by two racist men for no reason other than the color of his skin, can tell you that capital punishment will not help bring her closure or give her Emit back. It will only mean that she has done to her son's killers exactly as they did to him, and she does not want to be anything like the monsters that took her son's life.
In addition to the moral flaws in capital punishment, there are also several legal flaws which prove the injustice of execution by the state. Laws have been made to increase the standards for who can be put to death and who can not. Only a few short years ago, it was still legal to send a mentally retarded person to die. Finally, in the 2002 Supreme Court case of Atkins vs. Virginia, this cruel and unusual punishment was finally proved to be against the American Constitution by violation of the eight amendment. To further prove the injustice of capital punishment, a team of Northwestern journalism students and their teacher did investigations into the court cases of different men on death row in Illinois and eventually proved several different men's innocence. It is disgusting to see that these men spent had spent fifteen years on death row and been less than a couple of days away from their execution when a couple of college students proved their innocence and freed them from jail. With such inaccurate punishments and convictions of supposed murderers in this country, it is completely possible that innocent men and women will be sent to die. Whether it is a result of their race, economic status, or other outside factors, it is evident that the United States justice system is incredibly flawed and the only way to stop the injustice that occurs in execution by the state, is to ban the practice of execution by the state all together.

Death Penalty #2: Response to Deadline

Race and Class:

Statistically, people of color and low-income people are more likely to be sentenced to death. Why do you think this is? How might vestiges of legal segregation and historic race-based policies impact the modern U.S. justice system? What measures could be taken to ensure a fairer system of justice?

I believe that the jusice system is far more severe on people with lower incomes or lover status in society. If someone is one trial for murder and can not afford to pay great lawyer to fight for their defence, they will be less capable of proving their innocence or at minimizing the term of their punishment. Without a great lawyer prepresenting the supposed criminal in court, they will be less capable of creating a strong defence to present to the judge and jury and might be unable to do enough work and collect the right evidence neccessary to prevent the death penalty or possibly even prove the suspect to be innocent. Another factor, aside from income or class, is race. It has been proven that about 80% of people on death row are being charged for the murder of a white person. Even people who may claim that they are not racist may still be unconsciously basing their verdict on racist thoughts. For many centuries, whites have been thought of as superior to blacks in the United States of America. Even in modern day society, where racism is far less prevelent than even just a few decades ago, many people around the country still harbor unfair stereotypes about people of race that may sway them to think of the crime committed by a black person against a white person as worse than if it had been against a black person. Additionally, if there are many white people in the jury or making the decision about the punishment of the supposed murderer, they might feel more sympathetic to a white person who was murdered because they can more easily relate to them, and therefore, want vengence brought to the supposed killer. Any of these factors could lead to discrimination in the court room and more severe punishments being given to lower-income making people, people in the lower class, or non-caucasions. I honestly believe that the only way for these unjust biases to be prevented is to eliminate the death penalty. There is no way to ensure that all people on trial will receive the same quality of lawyers or be spared from racism or stereotypes that could potentially sway the decisions of the jury and judge.

Law and Politics:

The film frequently references the 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision that the death penalty was in violation of the 8^th Amendment of the Constitution. The 8^th Amendment states: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” How does this constitutional issue play a role in your opinions for or against the death penalty?

I think that the 8th Amendment is evidence that this nation was built to protect the safty and legal rights of all citizens. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America would not have approved of capital punishment because it could easily be condiered "cruel or unusual punishment." To sentence someone to death, especially when there is a possibility of the accused killer actually being innocent, would be an unfair punishment. Unfortunately, in this day and age in America, it can no longer be claimed that this is an "unusual punishment" in this nation, but if you look worldwide, there are very few countries that still condone capital punishment. Therefore, worldwide, this is actually an unusual punishment for a government to execute its citizens. If someone could explain to me how this form of punishment could not be considered to be going against the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, I would love to hear it because as far as I am concerned, this would be impossible.

The Bigger Picture:

What is your reaction to Stephen Bright’s quote about the exonerated prisoners?

“This was the third person released by the journalism students at Northwestern, and of course it doesn’t say much for our legal system when people spend sixteen years on death row for a crime they… didn’t commit. And that ultimately comes to light not because of the police or the prosecution, or the defense lawyers or the judicial system, but because a journalism class at Northwestern took it on as a class project to see whether or not these people were guilty or not. You know, if those students had taken chemistry that semester, these folks would have been executed.” Stephen Bright, Director, Southern Center for Human Rights.

It is appalling to me how flawed our justice system has been proven to be. The fact that a journalism class at Northwestern was able to uncover enough evidence to prove three men on death row to be innocent, proves how corrupt and biased this system is. At the time of the actual trial, theses accused men must have had very poor and lazy lawyers if they couldn't put together as much evidence to prove their client innocent as a class of college students did. This also forces the question, how many other accused men and women have been put to death despite their innocence, simply because their lawyers were too lazy to dig up enough evidence or because the jury and judge were too biased or discriminatory to believe their plea of innocence. To imagine that these three men would all be dead right now if these students had been given this assignment is horrifying. It only goes to prove how unfair this system of capital punishment is and that it should not be legal for our government to  execute citizens for crime they may or may not have committed. 

The Justice and Injustice of the Death Penalty

I am not convinced that the United States justice system is a completely just system after all. When a case is first introduced, the police or detectives working on interview witnesses or people who knew the victim to find suspects. Sometimes they show pictures of relatively random people in their society who already have a criminal record to see if they resmemble the criminal. In some cases, the witness will wrongly accuse a person who looks similar to the actual murderer or criminal. Once suspects are chosen, however, more steps are set in place to make a more reasonable and accurate decision on whether the person is guilty or not, and if found guilty, what his or her punishment should be. There are many stages to the trial which allow for the jury to recieve a plethera of information about the crime and the people involved, and to take their time coming to a decision. There are many laws set in place to assure that it a fair and proportinate punishment is given to the person convicted, but this is only true if you consider the death treatment to be a fair and reasonable punishment under any circumstance, which I do not. There is also a three week period after the person is convicted, for more evidence to be turned in that might prove them to be innocent. While at first this seemed like a great bonus that the attorneies could still prove their clients to be innocent even after the decision was wrongfully made, I realized that it is incredibly unjust for there to be a three week limit on this opportunity. If solid evidance is uncovered a month after the decision is made, no matter how strong the evidence is, it sounds like it is too late for it to be factored into the case to prove the man or woman on trial to be innocent. I greatly question how accuratly people are found guilty and if execution is a fair punishment.

Of all of these practices of execution, I believe that lethal injection is the most humane. It still has the potential to result in imense pain for the person being exectuioned if they do not have a useable vein or if the person who inserted the neeles did it incorectly. Still, the other forms of exectuion that have  been practiced in the United States, such as hanging, electricution, gas chambers, and firing squads are far more disturbing and really make the man or woman being exectuted suffer. It makes me question this nation completely, if our government will allow its citizens to be treated in such inhumane ways. The way that the executions were described were absolutely brutal and horrifying. They were tortured and died miserable deaths under different forms of execution. I know that some of these criminals committed atrocious acts of their own to their victims, I still can not understand using murder to punish them. I believe a more fitting punishment would be to force them to live lonely, miserable lives in jail, tortured over what the sins they committed and left to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

The number of people executed since 1976 plummeted greatly all across the country. It is clear that the country has under gone some major ethical and moral changes. Of all of the regions in the United States, it seems that the states that have had the highest number of citizens executed since 1976 were states in the deep, middle south, around Texas. Some states in the north have completely outlawed the death penalty (fourteen to be exact) but even some states that still allow the death penalty have very low numbers and rarely go as far as execution. Another point that I find interesting, is the number of people currently on death row in some states. Some places, such as California, have hundreds of people currently on death row, yet in the more than thirty years that the death penalty has been reinstated, these states have only gone through with executing a select few of these people. Only one or sometimes two digit worth of citizens in these states are put to death. The incredible decline in the number of people who have been executed in this country is also largely due to the changes made in the justice system over time. Many restrictions have been added to eliminate executions that would now be considered "cruel and unusual" punishment and found unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.

The statutes for Illinois's old death penalty seemed fairly reasonable. All of the laws seemed to reasonably fit the punishment of death. They all revolved around murder and severe crimes of extremely violent nature. These laws seemed pretty similar to those of the other states in the US that enforce the death penalty. Laws have become a lot more strict, requiring the punishment to truly fit the crime.

This data shows that there are now 16 states that don't allow the death penalty, not 14 like the last chart said. There is also a chart that says how many people have been killed in the entire country since 1976, showing just over 1200 deaths. What is incredible, is how much this number has decreased. According to some of the previous charts I saw, a couple of states had over 1200 people executed in that one state alone before the year 1976. I find it interesting that while 35% of those tried for the death penalty, only 15% of victims of these cases are black which suggests that cases were a black person is murdered less frequently result in the criminal being put on death row. Overall, I think it is clear that America's reactions towards the death penalty have changed drastically over time and as the laws became increasingly more strict, less and less people condoned the death penalty.

The Difference Between Offensive and Predjudice

This week, we watched a video about school board officials and presidents debating how universities should react to students who try to take advantage of their freedom of speech. The teachers and presidents debated over the rights of students and when they should be allowed to speak freely on campus as well as when this freedom should be restricted. After hearing their arguments for each side of the situation, I came to the conclusion that if the students are not speaking in a way that truly encourages violence or prejudice, then they should be permitted to speak their mind and share their views with others. I do not believe that just because a student's opinion is unpopular or inconstant with that of the school's means that the student should be prevented from taking action and speaking out about his or her views. If the opinion is offensive, that does not mean much because anything can be considered offensive to just about anyone. If the opinion and speech is promoting violent action towards a particular person or group of people, however, then I believe it should be forbidden on campus. There is a fine line between speaking one's mind and targeting innocent people and turing others against them. I am not in agreement with the professors and university presidents who said that any offensive speech should be stopped at a college campus, but I also do not agree with those who said they could not put an end to any form of expression because it would violate the students' freedom of speech protected under the First Amendment in the Constitution of the United States. It is definitely a delicate argument, but I do think that there is a very important difference to notice between expressing an offensive point of view and expressing a prejudice and violent opinion.