Of Means And Ends By Saul Alinsky Summary

The “Lessons from Jonestown” article from the American Psychological Association explains what happened in Jonestown, Guyana and why it happened. The members of the church wanted to leave the United States to escape racism, so they agreed to follow Jim Jones to South America. They hoped to live more peaceful, happy lives, but their lives were cut short due to a mass suicide led by Jones. Psychologists, such as Philip Zimbardo, believe that Jones’ success came partially from George Orwell’s book, “1984.” This book explained different facets of mind control and how it is executed, and there are many parallels between the examples in the book and in Jim Jones’ church. In the case of Jim Jones and Jonestown, an extremely intelligent leader played

Eduardo Mendieta constructs an adequate response to Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete? in his article, The Prison Contract and Surplus Punishment: On Angela Y. Davis’ Abolitionism. While Mendieta discusses the pioneering abolitionist efforts of Angela Davis, the author begins to analyze Davis’ anti-prison narrative, ultimately agreeing with Davis’ polarizing stance. Due to the fact Mendieta is so quick to begin analyzing Davis’ work, the article’s author inadvertently makes several assumptions about readers of his piece. For instance, Mendieta assumes that readers will automatically be familiar with Angela Davis. After arguing the failure of prisons, Mendieta establishes his agreement with Davis’ anti-prison rhetoric without introducing the author, her book, or other various abolitionist efforts, “I will also argue that Davis’s work is perhaps one of the best philosophical as well as political responses to the expansion of the prison system...” (Mendieta 293). The article’s author also assumes that readers are familiar with specific torture tactics used on prisoners,“...the United States is facing one of its most devastating moral and political debacles in its history with the disclosures of torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other such prisons…” (293). Mendieta’s act of assuming that readers will already be familiar with Angela Davis and her work, as well as the specific methods of torture used by certain prisons, may cause readers to feel lost while reading the

In his article, “Thresholds of violence” by Malcolm Gladwell, has effectively proven that the school shootings changed and they’ve became ritualized. From an incident, a group of three officers had arrived to the unit’s door step, and a young man stood in the center. The man became extremely defensive when one of the officers had to pat LaDue down. The officer had over heard that LaDue was making bombs in the storage locker, then had found a SKS assault rifle with sixty rounds of ammunition, a Beretta 9-mm, hand gun, including three ready-made explosive devices hidden in his bedroom. “There are far more things out in that unit than meet the eye” (Gladwell 2), exampling how there’s not only going to be a specific amount of bombs that would have

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an African-American Civil Rights Movement known for advancing civil rights by using nonviolent protest movements. Cesar Chavez, a labor union organizer and civil rights leader, publishes an article arguing about the importance of nonviolence in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Three most prominent rhetorical devices Chavez uses in the article include the use of moral reasoning, juxtaposition, and appeal to history. Chavez uses these rhetorical devices brilliantly to build his argument on nonviolent resistance in honor of the late Dr. King.

In the New York Times article “The Harm in Free Speech”, Stanley Fish argues that it would make no difference if Jeremy Waldron’s book, “The Harm in Hate Speech,” was titled “The Harm in Free Speech”. While providing an insightful review of the novel, Fish promotes the ideas depicted in the novel. Fish argues that American society is obsessed with using the First Amendment to say outwardly offensive statements. Fish asserts that “hate speech” is not simply expressing an opinion, but rather a way to belittle members of society a person deems unworthy. Americans hide behind the First Amendment and use it as a justification to spew hate speech. There is a difference between having hurt feelings when two people simply differ on views of a matter and what is deemed as “dignity harms”, which is when people are deemed as unworthy of respect. Fish believes that the First Amendment is indifferent to the effects on society.

Inequality and racism have always been present in the history of America. Many people battle these injustices through different forms, such as writing, speaking, or protesting. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass are both experienced in writing and speaking against certain injustices. In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” as well as in Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” they claim that injustice and inequality must be combatted in order for everyone to be free and equal.

Throughout history governments have evolved in their laws and ruling tactics. It has also changed the way literature has been portrayed to the readers. This essay is based on Totalitarian government. Totalitarianism is a form of government that whereabouts the fact that the ruler and government is an absolute control over the state. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini are some of the dictators that had total control over the people and state. This essay will include the ways in which the movie V for Vendetta and George Orwell’s book 1984 portrays totalitarianism in their use of language, and mistakes made in the past.

Cesar Chavez, labor union organizer and civil rights leader, took the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an opportunity to remind people about the benefits of nonviolent resistance. Chavez published an article in the magazine of a religious organization devoted to helping those in need. In this article, Chavez shares his views on how nonviolent resistance is more effective than violent resistance.

The questions of the whether social inequality is justified and the extent of government to address said inequality are some of the foundations upon which societies and economies are built. Two key philosophers on this issue – John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau – differ on this subject. In Two Treatises on Government, Locke holds that individuals have a right to property derived from their labor, citizens consent to the existence of inequality in society, and governments are instituted among men to protect said property. In contrast, Rousseau writes in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract that inequality should be strictly limited and that governments have a duty to act in the best interest of its citizens by maintaining

Being born free in America is nothing, but does not sound like the truth. America is known as a symbol of freedom though how much freedom does people really have? People in America need to take serious risks in order to earn their freedom that they want. Though when people try to express their freedom they get locked away by the government. No one ever can be free unless they fight for what they believe in.

During the writing of “The Declaration of Independence”, Thomas Jefferson go to great lengths to describe why the colonies were choosing to separate themselves from Great Britain. This is done not only so readers will have a detailed description of what the American people were facing while being ruled by the King. The vivid depiction of all the cruelty he has shown towards the people. Furthermore, the lengthy, highly descriptive examination of all the wrongs and showing that the colonists made many appeals to the King but also the people of Britain that the reader now feels as if it is wrong for the Colonies to be under Great Britain.

Does Macbeth relate to modern society? This can go both ways, there is some evidence that states it relates to society, and some that does not. Most of the story relates to Society for a good reason. If you have the ambition to get a task done, you would do anything to get it done. Even if you use immoral means to get done. When you use immoral means to get a task done there can be problems. This all relates to Macbeth and his desire to become king. He killed King Duncan so that he could become king. He then became a suspect of killing King Duncan in the story later on. This was the problem of completing his task with immoral means. There is a lesson being taught in the story. I do not know if Shakespeare was intending on making this story into a lesson, but you can make it a lesson. The story teaches you to not use immoral means to get any sort of task done. It can cause many consequences for you. You can get things done without

The world mourned when the Twin Towers were burned, Brussels was bombed, and when people were slain at a concert in Paris. All of these atrocities happened because of radicalization, which is taking an ordinary person and influencing their views to be more extreme and typically more violent. Radicalization is a social issue that was presented in the novel, Unwind, by Neal Shusterman. One of the main characters, Lev, was radicalized by a terrorist group, known as Clappers. Clappers lace their blood with explosives and then clap to detonate, killing as many people as possible. By researching radicalization my opinion that radicalization is wrong, did not change, I learned why it happens, and was able to connect it to my life.

In every Disney movie the villain is generally portrayed as evil or crazy, and it is taken as a personality type, but Disney movies also tend to sneak in a backstory for the villain geared towards explaining how they had come to be evil. And in the end, the villain is usually convinced that they should be “good” (again). So from this perspective, it may appear more so that the villain is not a personality type but a product of the situations they were in each moment that lead to he or she becoming the villain. Malcolm Gladwell is an award winning author who constructed a theory labeled The Power of Context, a chapter in his book The Tipping Point, to prove that people, such as villains in Disney movies, are products of their situations.