fEdna has 4 post(s)

Ruth Wilson Gilmore argue that expanding prison population is not helping the people. It is sad to know that USA is the country  has more people incarcerated, and instead  of helping people the system is trying to build more prisons. The main idea of Gilmore’s reading is all about the system and what they are doing? instead of helping, they just building more correctional facilities and spending money that can be use to help the population in so many ways.

During the reading Gilmore gives the cost of prison, and how much they spend to build one. “California has completed twenty two new prisons (1984), the new prisons, PLUS the state’s twelve previously exciting facilities, PLUS four new prisons being planned, PLUS internal expansions and PLUS….” Reading this paragraph make me think in the plus, California is not helping the population is just building more prisons to recruiter more  prisoners and erase the problem by keeping the “bad people” in a prison.

There is a lawyer Bryan Stevenson that is trying to make a difference and created a way to make people see what is happening in our country and what can we do to change the system. He said that slavery still here but with a different name “prisoners”. It is sad to know that the story repeats from enslavement to mass incarceration.

Gilmore also mention the reason why the massive incarceration ” another explanation for the burgeoning prison population is the DRUG epidemic and the treat to public safety posed by the unrestrained and trade of illegal substances”…. that is true people have to survive and some times when poverty hits there is no choice, the only choice is either you use drugs to forget or sell them to try to get out of poverty. Here is when the system just see the problem as a crime, and it has to be punish by taking away the people and just incarcerated like an animal. In California there more african american and latinos incarcerated and every year the percentage is increasing just like I mention before PLUS more prisoner.

If only there is a way to created a system where can solving the problem is not just taking away women or men who commented any kind of crime, is finding a way to help those people not to committed a crime, using the money that is use to build prison, to make more programs, help communities, created more schools, and more jobs just to keep the population a better system.

As I read Wendy Brown’s essay “The Most We Can Hope For…..” Human Right and the politics of Fatalism. Wendy has an interesting point of view about Human Rights and mentions about  Michel Ignatieff publication “Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry”

Humans Rights have been created to stop physical cruelty as well as any kind of abuse.However Wendy Brown believed that Human Rights are not created directly to a single individual, and I think her main idea is that Human Rights are being use more by people who are in politics, people using for demand of government, corporations or practically any political figure.

She also mention Ignatieff’s idea of how Human rights protect against violence and abuse, on page 452 she writes about Ignatieff commentaries published “That I take to be the elementary priority of all human rights activism: to stop torture, beating……as best we can, the security of ordinary people” I think this quote is saying that we have the power to keep fighting to get our rights and not only certain group of people.

“Human rights activism is amoral political project and if it displaces, compete with refuses, or rejects other political projects including those also aimed at producing justice” pg. 453, just like I mention before Brown still has a debate on what kind of rights recognizes each situation are political, historical, social or economic context. Brown has point out that to protect a certain vulnerable group, this rights have to be identify and reinforce the perception of that weak group.

On page 459 she also write about what are we have learned in the last century ” if rights secure the possibility of living without fear of express state coercion……the state nor do they enhance the collective power of the citizenry to determinate” Her idea about how rights work to articulate a need or a condition of fault or damage that can not be complete repaired or transformed by rights. These rights of systematic subordinates tent to rewrite, inequalities  and impediments to freedom that are consequent to social stratification as issues of individual violations and is rare for these violation to be articulated under the condition of such violation.

Wendy Brown thinks that although human rights have been created to defend any individual, after fifty years these rights remain only a symbol in which human rights activism which we have to argue in taking. Therefore we have to work within the prevailing discourse of human rights, but we have to be aware of the limits of these actions and remain centered on the idea that nothing is impossible.

The sexual contract,Carol Pateman addresses very seriously is the concept of the women been left behind on society. In her book she mention the state of nature,that was use in moral,political philosophy religion and social contract theories. She explained that our rights and freedoms were acquire from the social contract and it was interpret  by political theorist like Locke,Rousseau and Hobbes. Pateman mention the story of the original contract that establishes modern patriarchy and how the sexual contract is ignore over women’s rights. However one of the main targets on the book is about those feminist who have looked for a better contract having an equal rights. She also mention the conventional understanding of actual contract in every day life such as marriage contract, employment contract and prostitution contract.

“These familiar readings of the classic stories fail to mention that good deal more than freedom is at stake Men’s domination over women and the right of men to enjoy equal sexual access to women is at issue in the making of the original pact” Pg2 I think this quote has a meaning, because over the years women are been trying to have the same rights as a men, we still fighting over men been dominant and I think there are some changes over the years, I notice that in the streets there is more men taking care of their kids, men with strollers or  picking their child from school. I also notice women working in position that use to be only for men.

The reading of the theoretical battle between the patriarchalists and social contract theorists. There are different theorist have their own version of the state of nature. Pateman mention some of the political theorist, for example  she mention Hobbes on pg. 6 ” Women are the subject of the contract. The (sexual) contract is the vehicle through which men transform their natural right over women into the security of civil patriarchal right” Hobbes have the idea that all human are by nature equal in faculty of body and mind. However Locke consider the state of nature that all men are free but  depending on their actions and possession  they will be free.

Pateman writes about Rousseau where she mention that he was the only classic contract theorist who rejects slavery and any contract. One of Rousseau theory was that all men are born as a blank slate and later society and the environment influence which way it lean. I believe this is true, society and the environment is a huge influence in what our actions are, specially in this days where we have technology and we are able to watch over the world.

Hi, my name is Edna Archundia this is my first semester at City College. My major is Early Childhood and my concentration is Social Welfare. I have two kids, my daughter is 15 years old and my son 11 years old. When my son went to school and I stay home alone is when I start to work. Sometimes, society make us think that women have to stay home and just take care of the house and kids. I was thinking like that, but as my kids grew older, I notice that I have to do more than just stay home. After ten years with out studying I decided to go back to school, I was scared to go back and not be able to continue my education, specially because my first language is spanish. I complete my associate at La Guardia Community College and after four years I graduated. Now Im ready for new challenges and ready to finish my Bachelors. Im exited to learn more about the humans rights and the history of how the human rights were created and what are those change during this years.

Lynn Hunts describe the story by focusing on the American and French Revolution and the Declaration they inspired, she brings distinctly historical and another pout of view to the subject of the human rights. She also mention how men were living in society,by building slavery, subordination and their weekness by those who were on power.

She also mention why 18th century  Western Europe was the first society in history to develop the concept of “human rights” that was their idea of political and other rights the results were the indignation at such social institution as judicial torture. It is sad how men can change the world and make a difference depending on their thinking and the power they have. This is how society is build were the people who has power can make cruelty and brutality just with their idea of been superior. We are in the Twenty Century where supposedly every individual are equal, but if we search in society there are still a lot of slavery or  women been maltreat or people been inferior because they are poor.