Before I educated myself about this issue, there were many others already involved, planning, getting organized, and making their voices heard. I stumbled across an issue that many people feel very passionately about. I am happy to say that I am one of those people now, too.

There have been community meetings with the Philadelphia School Reform Commission so that the community can voice their concerns about the proposed plan to close schools and possibly privatize several. To elicit change in this topic, I attended one of these meetings at Girls High School on Thursday, May 24. Below is a video clip of me speaking at the hearing.

  The following are a few pictures that I took at the meeting on May 24^th, and a few photographs of another small meeting that occurred on Tuesday, May 22^nd which the School Reform Commission did not attend. 

For those who are interested, come to 440 N Broad Street outside of the School District of Philadelphia to make sure that the SRC hears your voice! I you cannot attend; you can live stream it from your computer here. It is my opinion that my education, and the education of my friends is in jeopardy, and it is our duty to make sure that we get the education that is our right!

            The, “Post for Change”! If you have followed along in my first and second posts, you should know that I have been discussing a topic that is very dear to my heart, and that I feel very passionately about; the murder rate in Philadelphia. This is an increasingly ongoing problem, and I have been working on my own way to try and change this, more of on a smaller scale though. My entire blog has been leading up to this, where I explain to you how I have figured out how to create my own personal post for change.

            Throughout the past 3 or so weeks, I have been researching, and talking to as many people as I can to try and learn as much as I can about the violence in Philadelphia, as well as one of the main ways that violence can be reduced. After evaluating everything, I have realized that one of the most effective ways to reduce violence is to enforce an effective neighborhood watch. This has been shown to reduce the amount of door-to-door violence, which would result in a significantly lower murder rate in Philadelphia. Even though this is the most effective way, due to my lack of resources, as well as age, I did not think it would be very realistic for me to attempt to set up neighborhood watches in Philadelphia. So I decided to make more awareness about the Philadelphia murder rate. I believe that awareness may result in people having a reality check, and understanding everything that has and continues to happen in Philadelphia.

            In order to create this awareness, I have created a piece of original content that I have also posted onto my Tumblr, Facebook, as well as my Twitter in order to increase the amount of people that are informed of this problem. My original content piece consists of a video of a montage of photos that shows you the sadness that comes with violence, especially murder. This video also has a piece of background music that not only is also a piece of original content, but also fits perfectly with the video. The talented Ronald Harper; who is doing a blog of his own if you would like to check it out; has composed this rap, and is performed by me.

Here is my final bibliography link!

            From my survey, I found lots of interesting information. When I was finishing up making it, I decided that I needed one last question. While I was trying to figure out what this one would be, I had a thought; I wonder how many people typically would remember a friends birthday if it weren’t for a facebook reminder? Pleased with myself for thinking of this question, I quickly typed it in, thinking that most people would respond with “Yes, of course I would remember a friend’s birthday!” Instead, my results spoke very differently. Turns out that 60% of people would not remember. To me, that is incredibly shocking. Because of that fact, I’m contemplating changing my birthday on facebook to a false date so a bunch of people wish me a happy birthday and then I get to laugh at them.

            From my survey, I also found the average time that people spend on social networking sites per day. The largest amount was that somebody said was 16 hours in total, which is astounding. The least was no time at all, and that was obviously from someone who didn’t have any social networking accounts. I tallied and found the average of my results, and created this chart:

            The most controversial question on my survey was “Have you found that you can express yourself better on social networking sites than you can in real life?” One of the best points that I saw was that when you’re behind a computer screen, you can think about how you want to articulate your thoughts and once you start typing words, you can always delete them if you haven’t posted them yet. Whereas in person, once the words are out of your mouth, you can’t take them back. However, a wonderful point that one of the responders posted was that “nothing on the web is ever personal or private, once it’s out there everyone can see it.” (here is an interesting article about that)

            One of the most interesting answers that I received, however, was this: “Better? No, definitely not. More carefully crafted? Sure. Those are different though.” Another one that can be discussed is when someone said “No. Social networking can sometimes remove the ‘human touch’ that is present in verbal communication.” Related to the concept of missing the “humanness” of a face-to-face conversation, one person answered “No, it’s difficult to communicate without using the non-verbals like body language, facial expression and tone of voice.”

Well, it’s time to make change. Throughout this entire process, I’ve been wondering what it’d be like to do a week without any sorts of social networking. And so, I decided to put this plan into action. Five of my friends and I (I tried to recruit more people, but my friends weren’t to keen on going an entire WEEK without facebook or twitter) started yesterday and are doing a week (May 28-June 4) free of these sites! Every day, we’re filling out a four question survey that I created which asks simple questions such as “How are you doing without social networking today?” and “Are you less distracted than you normally would be?” Results from this experiment will be posted next week.

            And so, the main question comes back: Is social networking good or bad? Through this project, I have become enraptured by both opinions, good and bad. I have heard excellent reasons for each of them, and I have certainly learned more about the topic itself. However, I only focused on a portion of the internet: social networking. With all information online, the use of google rather than textbooks, and the majority of communication happening on the internet, where is our generation headed? And once we become completely immersed in a technological life, will be able to get back out?

 Will we want to?

>>>CHANGE BEGINS HERE .

Something I plan on doing to make change would be to create a slide show in order to raise even more awareness about my issue, more like informing others, especially the ones who are bias and don't know much about my issue in general. Adding on this, I felt like this still wasn't enough. In order for me to make change and feel good about it, I would have to go beyond my comfort zone, and so I did!!! That's why in less then a week or so I will be in front of an audience speaking about my issue! This will be taking place in my middle school, but I must admit this is really nerve racking! Along with this speech I will also be presenting something more visual to these middle schoolers and that is the presentation I mentioned above. 

To view this presentation, take a look below; 

My change is to let people know about what they are doing to people. I believe that I will let people know by going to some classes in SLA like Mrs. Dunn Class and telling people about bullying. I think a lot of people don’t think about what they are saying to people. Maybe if I tell them to think about what they say, then they might stop bullying people so much. That how I will make a change.

I found out a lot about bullying by doing this project. I found out that a lot of people that had been bullied or seen people get bullied start to bully other people. This help me understand why bullying was a big and everyone needed to know about this. That’s why I made a video about bullying. I only thing I ask is to please stop and think about what you are saying to people and doing to people. 

One thing I’ve found out is why corruption and censorship isn’t stopped. It can be because some people are raised to think that certain things are acceptable. Some only want to do anything they can to make life easy and happy for themselves. There are those who try to go against it but their work doesn’t go that far. Others just simply don’t care because if it’s out of sight it’s out of mind.

But I have taken a look at some websites I frequent, mainly Tumblr. Tumblr is a blogging website, where one can make his or her own blog. It can range from a blog centered on an item or a band to a random blog, in which you can post whatever you want. A good handful of blogs are personal to the owner, in which they share their struggles with daily life. While browsing some of these blogs, I’ve found what are called ‘Ana’ and ‘Mia’ blogs, referring to Anorexia and Bulimia respectively. These blogs contain emancipated images of girls in fashion shows or even some airbrushes females on magazine covers. The people running the blogs are usually referring to these images as ‘thinspiration’ or ‘thinspo’.

Common Thinspiration are models in the media and girls from magazine covers and celebrities, who are also under this influence. Even the Internet is becoming a dangerous place for being comfortable with what you look like and who you are. Many celebrities have posed for magazines and complained about the editing they do to their bodies.

I personally think that this is all ridiculous.

What is so wrong with seeing a person with flaws? Does the media know their impact on young girls’ lives?  

Sources

            Attention all viewers! Recent studies have shown that the foods that we love the most, are killing us slowly. According to Top 10 Junk Foods, common foods that teenagers can easily find are French fries, a can of soda or chips. This junk food is found at an affordable price. Therefore everyone will buy them because they find them delicious and might even think they are nutritious. If our country increased the junk food prices and lowered the fruits and 100 percent fruit juice was at a cheaper price then our country wouldn’t be in an Obesity crisis.

            When we get hungry, we want something to eat fast and hot. That’s where the idea fast food restaurants came from. Before, the U.S did not have such a system of fast food because they knew that if the food were out for too long, it would begin to spoil. Then, they made up a system in which the food was going to be ready. This process is horrible because its fried fat, and/or through the microwave. This may sound disgusting but it’s the truth. Millions of Americans love fast food restaurant. That’s where obesity comes in. You see, when you are cooking greasy fat then you are serving poison to the community. You’re killing our country for a dollar a burger. If someone was hungry and it was between the food that is home or a fast food restaurant, 2 out of 3 people chose fast food because they don’t want the wait. This food is horrible for the body but like it tastes good, the community doesn’t mind.

            Obesity rates have also gone up in the United States because we are currently in a recession. Unemployment rates are going up because there is not enough money and not enough money means not enough food. Unless, you buy the unhealthy food that can potentially kill you. We need change and we need it now. The prices in our country have to change. What’s bad for us is extremely affordable but what’s good for us is horrible. How can this society not be as mindful with the new generation and putting them at risk of so many illnesses?

            There needs to be change now. In our country the obesity rates for a male is about 31 percent. This needs to stop now. There is no reason why we can’t eat what we want without having to pay a lot of money. All of this fast food is causing cancer to our citizens because the fries from fast food restaurants contain a chemical that causes cancer. The community does not know this because we are not aware. We buy but do not know what we are buying! This has to stop.

There are many ways that the new generation can eat these foods while leaving original flavors and no artificial flavors. If our government makes a change in our food change we can be able to lower the rates of obesity. For example, if they say that a bag of chips, costs two dollars and a bunch of bananas is 35 cents per pound then the country will want to eat the banana. The country goes for the cheapest item. IF the healthier things aren’t as expensive than I can guarantee that we would have a healthier child rate.

We can change this now. Change is something that we all need and especially this country. We need healthier foods for lunch, and more affordable prices for the foods we need to eat. We had so many farmers and now we have none. Like unemployment is so high and farmer rates are so low, then why don’t we hire farmers? If we hire these farmers, then our fruits will be more affordable and our country will be at a healthier state.