The Policy Podcast; Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)

I'm closing the Chapter for junior year humanity courses. That means that I'm ending my policy course. This course was different for me. I never learned about the government in such an extensive way as we did this term. I'm grateful for everything that I learned about because now my classmates and I have more knowledge on what it means to be a citizen of America, as well as learning different perspectives outside of American citizenship. The first unit we learned about the Legislative branch, the second unit, we learned about the Executive branch. In this unit, we learned what the Judicial branch of the government is all about. Learning about the government, we of course will see some terms that aren't common so my teacher gave us some legal terminology to define. Knowing those terms, it made subjects easier to comprehend. I now understand how a case reaches the Supreme Court. While understanding the process of a case being handled, I got to get to know more of what it means for something to be constitutional or not. So, with learning about the supreme court, we researched different cases, specifically all of the landmark cases, such as Roe v. Wade and Brown v, Board of education. This might've been the most impactful unit for me because I really got a sense of how change happens within the legal world. Some of the cases were even inspiring because it shows that change is worth fighting for and without the fight, nothing will change.

To represent everything that I learned this unit, I made a podcast talking about Terminiello v. Chicago (1949).

There are a lot of interesting and necessary Supreme Court cases, it's not easy to just pick one to look more into. I first thought that I was going to choose Tinker v. Des Moines but someone recommended me to look at Terminiello v. Chicago and I never heard about it. I chose this case after looking at it more because I though it was more interesting than my former choice, although they both have to do with our First amendment rights. I enjoyed making this podcast and while trying to explain what I learned, I even ended up learning more.

Citations
“{{Meta.pageTitle}}.” {{Meta.siteName}}, www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/337us1.

“Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).” Justia Law, supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/337/1/.

Reports of cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania : [1828-1835] / by William Rawle, jun. ; with notes referring to cases in the subsequent reports by William Wynne Wister, jun

Comic Studies: Sequential Art

Making comic books is a form of storytelling. For my last junior year, I submitted a proposal for comic making, something that I’ve wanted to learn more of. I chose this study because I always liked to write and create things. I got interested in political comics and I thought that it was really cool that you communicate a meaning behind them, as serious or not as you want it to be. My goal was to get to know more about the process of making comics, make my own comic and of course, read a lot of new comics.

At the beginning of this course, I started with broad research. I looked at different manga artist and anime artist because I know that anime and cartoons go hand and hand with what I was researching. I also did my first mini-comic of the term, this folds into a little book, throughout the term I did a couple of these: here’s my first one (follow the numbers):

MW, How to Leave a Coma, 2019 

I also did my first Comic-Jam of the term with my adviser, this is one of my favorite things that I did in this class. A comic Jam is when at least 2 people are involved and each person has a sheet of paper. You both start off with making one comic panel, it can be for as long or as short as you want it to be. After the time is up you pass it to the next person and you keep passing it along until the comic is done. Here’s my top 2 of the term.

MW, AM, Untitled Jam04, 2019

AM, MW, Untitled Jam05, 2019

I had 2 field experiences for this class. The first one was Free Comic Book Day, I went with my friend who also likes comic books and my goal was pretty easy to achieve, get new comic books. This trip really helped me because it gave me a lot of inspiration. It felt really awesome seeing so many different styles and I got to talk to an comic artist while I was at one of the stores. The second one was more of an internal experience. I had the opportunity to talk to a writer, Dave Scheidt. He's from Chicago, and has wrote for Cartoon Network, Huffington Post, Nickelodeon, and a good amount of others. This experience was impactful because I got an actual perspective of someone working in the field of comics.

My goal for this course was to Create a comic book. I ended up not being to have a finished project but I'm not mad at that. The process seemed so much simpler in the beginning. As we all know, not many things are as they seem. I had made a lot of different plots while trying to come up with the idea that I used in my comic. The script is down below, it was my first time completing a script/ story this long.

My main inspiration for this story was just the human mind and the span of emotions that we feel, I think with all if my stories, I exaggerate different emotions and how I process things that may be different for other people. I didn't want a story with a clear message. I want it to be up to interpretation. I'm proud of what I made, it might not be that understandable but I tried to make it make sense. I did realize that I have a lot of dialogue and maybe next time I could find different ways that characters can communicate without words.

 I was able to draw a few of the panels after I established character design and revised some parts of the script. Here's one part that I was able to draft.

MW, Room Draft, 2019

Overall, I wish that I was able to finish this comic by the end of this course but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to continue working on this project. I think that this process has allowed me to appreciate comic art more. I'm glad that I was able to do this independent study.

Now Lets Make ChicaGLOW

I'm ending my junior year, which means I'm ending Urban Planning with our last unit: "Flow". In this class, we discussed the designs of neighborhoods locally as well as globally. I saw some neighborhood designs from all over the spectrum, like cities from hundreds of years ago, in different countries and even locally. My favorite cities that we researched was Curitiba and the Pullman district, they’re both different designs and turned out different but I enjoyed learning about those different communities, it was inspiring and eye opening to learn how urban planning really affects citizens in different ways. While researching during our internal investigation, we viewed and listened to James Kunstler’s, Majora Carter’s, and Ellen Dunham-Jones' Ted Talks. They all presented 3 different subjects on communities and cities. These subjects talked about the architecture of cities and how it’s gotten lazy, the inequality of communities, and how we can fix these issues with concepts such as retrofitting. There were also other terms my classmates and I dissected like white flight, R.C.I. (Residential Commercial Industrial) communities, and N.I.M.B.Y. (Not In My Back Yard). For our External Investigation, we visited the pedway system downtown that connects all of the train lines, including the Metra.

MW, The Rede, 2019

I used all of this new information to redesign my very own neighborhood! I planned out a design at an intersection that has a lot of empty and unused spaces.

 I didn’t want to do my neighborhood because there’s nothing really here except houses and a few stores here and there. I then told myself how this was a good opportunity to apply my urban planning skills and make this intersection with nothing to do around it into the center pf this neighborhood. To find out what I wanted to do, I had to reflect on why do I have to leave my neighborhood to do things? After answering that, I thought about how there are kids my age in my neighborhood and there are even younger kids and how we should have more community centers so there can be more interaction throughout my block. For the new design, I used Minecraft to best represent what I wanted. This design relates to 2 different SDG's

SDG 11.7- by 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, particularly for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities. All of the spaces that I added were public and while designing them, I thought of how everyone could be involved no matter your age, race and capabilities. 

SDG 11.6- by 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality, municipal and other waste management. I added recycling and garbage on the streets. If you look at my design, the blue boxes represent public waste management because I know Chicago isn't the best at waste management.

MW, Bike Lanes, 2019

Peter Calthorpe has 7 different principles to build a better city. While designing this, I thought about those. One of them is to raise the bike rate, I believe that with bike lanes, people wouldn't be as hesitant to bike, Another one is walk, with these spaces so close to a residential area, it would be so easy to walk and go to the library or go to the park instead of having to drive. He also talks about spreading out the density of cities and bringing more community spaces to neighborhoods like mine is a step in the direction of spreading density around in a city instead of having everything downtown or having to travel. 

Overall, this was a challenging action project and it was completely worth it, I enjoyed doing everything. I'm glad that I got to use Minecraft as well because I personally enjoy playing Minecraft so it was cool to have a crossover with what I'm doing in school. This course, Urban Planning was a great class to take and I plan on sharing what I learned with my peers outside of school because it's all useful information. 

Sources:

“Chicago Cultural Center | Choose Chicago.” English, www.choosechicago.com/things-to-do/museums-and-arts/chicago-cultural-center/.

“Sustainable Development Goal 11.” Sustainable Development.org. United Nations. Web. 3, Jun 2019. 

TED. “7 principles for building better cities | Peter Calthorpe.” Youtube.com. Lesson by Peter Calthorpe. August 31, 2017. Web.