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Emma Pompeii Integrative Seminar 2: Systems and Strategies Midterm PaperMarch 6, 2017Redesigning the Scarlet Letter?Beginning as a small idea in my mind, and moving to an issue that has disturbed, intrigued, and challenged me to become involved, mass incarceration quickly became a relevant topic in my research. The book that inspired my research heavily, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, was filled with the cries of a generation that needs to make a change. “A felony is a modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you get that F, you’re on fire.” It is quotes like these where Alexander hits home, and makes us think about how we are living out a new racial caste system, by labeling minorities felons. As the main topic of interest to me now, mass incarceration began as a small idea mixed between myself and my two group partners. The progression of research, both individually and in the group, has encouraged deeper thinking. In our Studio 2: Systems and Strategies class, we were told to choose any issue of interest in our world today and explore our mind for our initial thoughts on that issue. I decided that I had a personal curiosity in gun control. We had to create a mind map, list all the things we associate, and what interests us most about that issue. I found that I associated abuse of power, politics, and emotions with gun control. We then had to match up our ideas with two other people in the class, and I ended up with Laurie and Steven, as Laurie found that she was concerned with police brutality, and Steven in government corruption. Our ideas coincided together with protection and abuse of power being main topics of concern.The hardest part about combining these three issues was finding how they connected into one cohesive research topic. I began intensively researching gun control, first in the United States, about mass shootings, and the laws we currently have. Then I reached out to a global scale, and researched the gun laws in other countries that have less death by gun violence, mass shootings, and gun ownership than we do in America. My main research question was, why? Why do these countries have significantly less rates of gun deaths than we do? What are they doing that is so drastically different than we are? It was interesting to look at gun control on a global scale, and see how our country is failing. Failing at preventing gun deaths, and failing to decrease the amount of people who die every day. This led me to a more specific topic; inner-city gun violence. I quickly learned that inner-city gun violence, specifically focused on minorities lives in places like the Southside of Chicago and Harlem, is the main area of concern when it comes to gun ownership. While we always see mass shootings in the news, which are equally as terrifying and devastating, they make up only one percent annually of all the gun deaths in America. That number shocked me. I have been so used to seeing all the horrifying mass shootings so prevalent in the news, but I didn’t know anything about the shocking statistics of inner-city gun deaths. This connection made from gun control to inner-city gun violence quickly led me to a link to Laurie’s topic of police brutality. Through my research, I learned that most inner-city minorities own guns because they fear the police, their aggression, and their authority. Inner-city residents believe the police do not do a good job of protecting them, and therefore choose to take matters into their own hands. Most people own guns for protection, from gangs, crossfire, and drive-byes, because they believe the police are ineffective. They join gangs, buy weapons, and start becoming close with the bad parts of the inner-city to protect their families. Yet, if they are caught with a weapon, they face a very long sentence in prison. This project was interesting when we had to integrate all our interests into one idea that would make sense to present to the class. Our ultimate idea was to research gun-violence as well as police brutality in the Southside of Chicago. We decided to hone in on one place, so we could get more location specific facts and hard hitting evidence. The further I got into my search, the more disturbed I became. While focusing on the Southside, I came across many academic journals studying the effects of violence on high school students in the Southside. I learned what CVE was (community violence exposure) and how it mentally and emotionally affects children, and how it leads them to live a life full of violence and crime. Living in the ghetto is not an easy place to grow up, or grow out of. Developing children are creatures of habit, what they see they will duplicate, creating the never-ending violence and need for protection. Further, as I researched violence in the Southside, I learned that 2016 was the bloodiest year on record, showing that the issue is not getting any better. Chicago, being America’s third largest city, had more homicides than its leading cities (New York and LA) combined. Chicago saw 2988 shooting victims, 488 homicides, and 59 active gangs. Among these horrifying statistics, black men largely outweigh these numbers. Black men face a gun homicide rate of fifteen per 100,000 people, where white men see only two per 100,000. More than thirty Americans are murdered every day in homicides – and fifteen of those Americans are black men. They are nine times more likely to be victims of homicide than white men, six times more likely than black women, and twenty-six times more likely than white women. After watching 13th, a Netflix documentary by Ana Duvernay, I realized that the real issue that I could connect with my group’s ideas was mass incarceration. The increase in America’s prison population in the past few years is astonishing, and is directly related to police occupation and the War on Drugs. At this point in my research, I decided to focus solely on mass incarceration, and the police occupation in the Southside of Chicago. The United States contains five percent of the world’s population, but twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population – weighing in at 2.3 million prisoners. One in three black men from the Southside will go to prison, making it more likely for young boys to go to prison than graduate college. As shown in the statistics above, the violence and mass incarceration of young black men greatly outweighs the statistics of white men. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander was my next source for research, which opened my eyes and easily became the biggest influence on my project. Alexander goes into detail about how mass incarceration is a new form of a racial caste system in America. It is a new way for “the higher-ups” to assert their dominance and power against the minorities, by locking them up for life for non-violent crimes and treating them like criminals. “We make them their crimes”, Alexander says. When the War on Drugs started during Reagan’s presidency, black men were largely portrayed as the kingpins and criminals that needed to be “taken care of.” Because of this blind racial stigma that was placed on black men, policemen, whether consciously or unconsciously, could be completely racially biased in who they chose to pull over, search, and arrest. This led to large police occupation in inner-city black communities, like the Southside, and incredible mistreatment of the minorities because of these racial biases that they were being taught to live by. In this way, we created a new Jim Crow. A new way to label black men; felons. Once a person is labeled a felon they are shunned from society, from jobs, public housing, even the right to vote. They lose all rights and wear an F on their chest, like a redesigned scarlet letter. Because of the three strikes and minimum sentencing laws, nonviolent criminals in possession of small amounts of crack cocaine, which became huge during the beginning of the War on Drugs, caused men to be put away for life, a form of cruel and unusual punishment. While drug possession and transportation is absolutely a crime, it still does not give police the right to treat young black men like animals, like filthy criminals without rights. The unlawful searches and seizures which have become part of everyday life for young men in the Southside is wrong, and shows the problem of our masked racism as a country. A nonviolent criminal should not be put away for life, plain and simple. Yet it happens every day without fail because of the three strikes and minimum sentencing laws. Why on earth would a nonviolent criminal, instead of giving them options of getting help and education, be locked up longer than a violent criminal? Our justice system is completely sideways. My research disturbed, upset, and intrigued me. It truly opened my eyes to something I had never given much consideration to before. Looking at this subject from so many different perspectives, especially from the view of 13th and The New Jim Crow, and seeing mass incarceration as a new racial caste system gave a whole new idea to the issue. The way we treat minorities in this country is overlooked, and needs to become more of a prevailing issue. My group did great research, and found that each week we were each able to bring new and interesting information to the table. Our shared ideas gave way to the complete project we came up with in the end, and as a start, I felt it was beneficial to get a group perspective before going our own directions for the next project. We worked hard as a group to present the ideas in a creative way to our classmates. This is not an easy subject, nor a simple one, and coming up with the idea of how to present this mass of information in an interesting way was a difficult task. As mentioned before, the installation was inspired by the quote in The New Jim Crow, “once you get that F you’re on fire.” We chose to represent our information in the form of red boxes containing our notecards, with the boxes arranged in the shape of a large F. Each box had writing on the outside leading the reader toward what kind of information was inside each one. We also had charts next to the boxes to break down the information on one page. For our presentation, we chose to research individuals who have fallen victim to mass incarceration, and unfair treatment under the law. Locking up a person for a nonviolent crime for life is something that should never happen, and by putting it into perspective with the amount of people in the classroom during our presentation allowed our peers to realize just how often it happens. Along with a video in the background and hard-hitting images, enforcing our point of victimization, defenselessness, and hardships. Moving forward with this topic, I decided I wanted to focus more on the prison-industrial complex; an idea that is just touched on in most of the sources I used including 13th and The New Jim Crow. The issue of prison privatization is one of increasing concern, and the ways that capitalist economies exploit their workers. Private prisons are turning bodies into profit and they actually benefit from the horror that is mass incarceration. The growth of private prisons in this century is steadily increasing, and it is a huge topic of question. I want to discover where the funding comes from this massive rise, and who gains from this tragedy. This leads me to the question that will inspire my research for the rest of the semester, where are these private prisons, and who invests in them? BibliographyAlexander, Michelle. “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” New York: The New Press. 2012. Alexander’s emotional and incredibly written book was the basis of my research. This book is the reason that I could make connections between mass incarceration and police brutality, and by reading this book and taking extensive notes, my research became specific and reliable. Beckett, Lois. “How the Gun Control Debate Ignores Black Lives.” Pro Publica. Last modified November 24, 2015. . At the beginning of this project, I began with basic online sources to get an idea for the issue. This article on Pro Publica was my first introduction on inner-city violence and mass incarceration. It gave a basis on homicide rates and inner-city crime, allowing me to understand the severity of violence as a starting point for my research.Duvernay, Ana. 13th. Documentary. Directed by Ana Duvernay. 2016. Sherman Oaks, CA: Kandoo Films. Netflix. This Netflix original film was another main part of my research. Filled with intense infographics and statistics about mass incarceration and the War on Drugs, I found this to be one of the most beneficial sources that I utilized. It started analyzing civil rights through history, and how masked racism affects our society today. Franklin, H. Bruce. Prison Writing in 20th-century America. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.By gathering more than sixty selections from some of the most powerful works written about American prisons in the last hundred years, Franklin offers a view into prison life itself in modern society. Considered a dramatic and unique collection, this book is a great way to expand my research to inside the prison system, rather than looking at the outside research. Guarino, Mark and Mark Berman. “Gun Violence Surges in Chicago, where residents want to show ‘everything is not all bad.’” Washington Post., Last Modified September 6, 2016. . This Washington Post article was another source I used as a basis to my research. Including information about the rates of homicides in the Southside of Chicago, it put the state of inner-city violence in perspective before I did more in depth scholarly research.Jarecki, Eugene. The House I Live In. Documentary. Directed by Eugene Jarecki. 2012. London: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Breaking the box office and getting ratings through the roof, this documentary based on mass incarceration and the soaring imprisonment rates in America covers the path we need to be on to change. Of the many documentaries on this topic, The House I Live In has gotten great ratings and was originally produced in London, giving it an outsider’s \view on the issue. I plan to watch this documentary in the future to broaden my research. Patton, Desmond, Aparna Sodni, Steven Affinati, Jooylung Lee, and Marie Crandall. “Post-Discharge Needs of Victims of Gun Violence in Chicago: A Qualitative Study.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (2016): 1-21. This article in The Journal of Interpersonal Violence, a peer reviewed and scholarly source, did a study on young black boys and girls living in the Southside of Chicago. The study was to see how children in the Southside are affected by the aggressive exposure to violence they experience every day. This article gave a good outlook on just how badly fear and violence affects inner-city families. Sierra-Arevalo, Michael. “Legal Cynicism and Protective Gun Ownership among active offenders in Chicago.” Cogent Social Sciences, no. 2, (2016): 1-21. Published in the journal of Cogent Social Sciences, this scholarly source is based around the illegal possession of weapons in the Southside. This article was very important to my research, because it stated that many people own weapons because they fear police brutality, and their effectiveness as a protective force. This was a great tie between mass incarceration and police brutality. Voisin, Dexter R., Jason D.P. Bird, Melissa Hardestry, and Cheg Shi Shiu. “African American Adolescents Living and Coping with Community Violence on Chicago’s Southside.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, (2011): 2483-2498. This article is another published in The Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and similarly to the one cited above, did a study on the affects of inner-city violence, more specifically, on patients in the hospital. The most important information gained from this article was just how many patients there are, again, showing the prevalence of violence in the Southside. Willoughby Nason, Julia and Nick Sandow. The Kalief Browder Story. Television mini-series. Created by Julia Willoughby Nason and Nick Sandow. 2017. New York: The Cinemart. Spike TV. This TV series which aired March 8 is about a young black man in New York City seeking justice for his 3-year imprisonment at Riker’s Island and wrongful arrest. Seen as a major cry against mass incarceration and unjust punishment in America, I plan to watch this television mini-series as the next part of my research.18802353202940Final installation and graphs 00Final installation and graphs 1767205-42545Final installation by itself 00Final installation by itself Graph featured in 13th Documentary Graph 2 featured in 13th Documentary that inspired my ideas for our installation1663703779520Original mind map created to map out interests in worldly issues – I chose gun control00Original mind map created to map out interests in worldly issues – I chose gun control53340205105My mind map created to connect the group ideas – I had Steven (who chose government corruption) and Laurie (who chose police brutality)00My mind map created to connect the group ideas – I had Steven (who chose government corruption) and Laurie (who chose police brutality)1657356595110Sketch of the final installation idea – including text and size measurements00Sketch of the final installation idea – including text and size measurements27908251346200085090024130Second graph created for studio – when my ideas were focused around gun control 00Second graph created for studio – when my ideas were focused around gun control -1752602425700030238702674620Final mapping of ideas made in studio – showing the evolution of issues0Final mapping of ideas made in studio – showing the evolution of issues-615951880235Original graph made to represent our firstmapping of ideas as a group in studio00Original graph made to represent our firstmapping of ideas as a group in studio ................
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