Writing in the Middle

Fact # 1

"Gang-related, high-crime neighborhoods
can be classed into three types:
turf hot spots, where gangs fight over territory
control; drug hot spots, where gang motivated
drug offenses concentrate; and
turf and drug hot spots, where gang-motivated
crimes relate to both."

I pulled this from The National Institute of Justice's study of gang violence in Chicago by Carolyn Rebecca and Richard Block. This fact does not surprise me but I found interesting it is broken into three different types. Gangs will try to intimidate not only rivals but innocent civilians to know who is in charge. That is, people will be walking down and the gang will sent out a few members to protect the area. sometimes they'll just give people an evil stare and other times, they'll show a weapon just for a scare tactic. To them, it's all about money and power and with both, it is a powerful weapon.

Fact # 2
"Certain youth and local community-including police, schools, youth agencies, probation, churches, businesses, and neighborhood organizations, and also families, gangs, former gang youth, and local government leaders together are responsible for the creation and development of the problem."

I pulled this from a book titled "Reducing Youth Gang Violence: The Little Village Gang Project in Chicago." by Irving A. Spergel. This one really caught my eye y the lists of things that contribute to the problem. What I don't understand is that if they are really trying to help, why does it not work? That is, what is the problem that these organizations fail to reach to the youth? A lot of people maybe divided on this problem like some would say it works 100% and others think that it is a flop.

Despite the difference in these facts, some of them do correlate to one another. If those organizations above failed to reach out to the youth, then they'll turn to gangs and will be involved in a number of crimes including drug dealing. As stated above, I did have a question about why do these programs fail? That I would like to investigate further and would like to put it in the paper to discuss about it.    

Researching both on Google and the Library

Going into my project, I have both used internet and library resources in helping me with the research. On Google, I would type in "gangs in Chicago" and I get all sorts of results. One in particular caught my interest.
http://chicagogangs.org/index.php?pr=BURBS_SECTION

On this site, you would get all the gangs that are not only in Chicago but it's surrounding suburbs such as Arlington Heights and Downers Grove. To me, this is both useful information and scary because I heard a lot of gang activity but never experienced it. Another great artcile I found in ny research is about a school counselor who helps kids get out of the gang life.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/garcia/17382901-452/suburban-counselor-helps-kids-escape-gangs.html

Going into more research, I go to the libarary and use some of their sources. One interesting article I found is a history of gangs in Chicago going all the way back from the 1900's.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=137842


In all of this, I will find great articles from all kinds of rsources such as magazines, newspapers, videos, etc. I look forward to go further in this and make a good paper as a result.

Research Questions

Steps I have taken into writing this paper have been going well. My topic of Research is gang life in the city of Chicago. Over the past few years, gang life in Chicago has taken a toll on the city. Fighting over turf has resulted in the death of many civilians ranging from kids to adults. I want to know if there are steps into solving this problem before it takes out more innocent lives.

Last Monday in class, I got a lot of help from my fellow students when we passed out our proposals. Ever since, I went did a lot of research and now I just have to narrow it down to a couple of sources and conclude which ones would help me and which ones won't. I have written notes and hopefully by this week, I will complete some sort of rough draft on the annotated bibliography and from there, knock off the list and continue to finish. I have to stay focus and probably will be up late on some nights and brew some coffee or something.

Strict Father Model

In my own words, Lakoff's theory is a type of parenting that can either be good or bad. In other words, it can teach a child to be brave and strong or can damage them mentally. In this article, the author talks about how her Father dealt with her brother and her when they got in trouble. It seems to me that the author grew up in a Conservative household and reading this, she still has some of that. In one of the paragraphsn the author mentions how many Amercians should not depend on the government to solve their issues.

"We need to start teaching our kids to have some self-confidence and self-reliance that is based on reality, not based on arrogant “everybody is a winner (too big to fail), everyone gets a trophy (bailouts)” policies."

This to me, represents the Strict Father Model that Lakoff talks about. In the Article, she talks about how her Mother would be "Wait till your Father comes home" which means the Father runs the house and will deal with the punishment. He will not like to punish the kids but it will teach them a lesson in tough love.  

When Jon met Chris

Whenever Jon Stewart is on a network talking to someone, he is fun to watch and does a great job on taking jabs, especially with Bill O'Reilly. In this interview, Chris is trying to break Jon but in return, Jon fights back and does not back down. Though these two have different views, they come to respect one another in the end. Jon Stewart as he says, is comedian and when he does his thing on "The Daily Show", he is satirizing every news organization, especially Fox News. He makes fun of how other news stations frame their stories and he puts in his own commentary. He deconstructs the stories on the news and makes fun of the way they are told. Chris Wallace on the other hand, works for Fox and it's his job to report the news and have his voice in it as well. The news station, Fox, is infamously known for siding with the Conservatives. Jon tells Chris that Fox is basically a propaganda machine controlling people's minds while Chris makes fun of Comedy Central for the contents it shows. However, Jon keeps his cool and rolls along. Jon even told him how some people on the right don't like being told that they are angry and racist. I should say that even though I don't watch Fox News, I applaud Chris for not going out of control calling Jon names like "Pinhead".

Going off subject, after finishing the videos, I decided to watch Jesse Ventura when he is on Fox News. Watching him talk on other talk shows are funny because he says the same stuff over and over like "I was a Governor" or "America has lied to me" has me laughing all over.

Blog #5 Framing

For my two articles, I chose two where they talked about how Ramzi Yousef, a terrorist who took part in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, wants to get out of solitary confinement and be with the other prisoners. The first article was from the Chicago Tribune and it was a long peace. They start the article by describing his prison life and the size of the cell he is living in. In the article, the writer uses sources such as a humanities professor about how solitary confinement could psychologically damage these prisoners. The framing used here was a bit of both "get him out of solitary confinement" vs "he should be locked in there for the rest of his life. The writer, Richard A. Serrano, carefully doesn't get on either side and plays it safe.

The other article was from the Huffington Post and this one was much shorter than the Chicago Tribune one. The article starts off with "First, Ramzi Yousef declared war on the United States government, vowing to wage jihad with bombs. Now, the convicted ringleader of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center has taken his fight to the courtroom." This writer just hits it out of the gate and attacks him. The only source they got was something from CNN. The Framing here was on the side of "Lock him up" because of the way the writer starts off.

Out of these two articles, I prefer the Chicago Tribune one because it was detailed and it played on both sides. The framing works here because it makes you think rather than just hearing from one side. The other one was much shorter and really didn't get into a ton of detail. Framing allows us to analyze a important topic and have a debate about it. Here, we could if whether or not this man should be in confinement or not. 

Buying Things

As a film lover, I love to buy older films and the best place to get them at is Amazon. For example, I bought "The Searchers" and for $7, I got the movie, a comic book, a book on the production and photos of the set. A lot of DVDs I have you can no longer find in stores. I also get textbooks from there which I'll need for class.

For groceries, my Father does something radical: He gets meats at a butcher shop, fruits and vegetables at Marianos and everything else at Wal-Mart. He says he's trying to find the best deals and save money.

For clothing, I usually go to stores like Marshalls or Carsons to get woven shirts. I also like to get band shirts and shirts with characters like Superman or The Avengers and I usually shop where I can find. Rock America and Target are great places to find those kind of shirts. I have foot problems on my right foot after an accident in high school, I always buy and wear gym shoes. For that, I go to stores like Dicks or Kohls to find good sneakers that feel comfortable.