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Monday, May 03, 2010

Social Justice Event

For my social justice event I went to hear Charles Cobb Jr. speak here on campus. Cobb had a bunch of achievements; he's written and published many books including No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000. He was a civil rights activist and is currently one of the big authors on an African news website, which is one of the worlds biggest information site on Africa. I was actually kind of dreading going to this because I waited last minute and this was pretty much my only option and I really hate listening to people talk to me for two hours straight about something that happened years ago. However this was totally different, this man was actually part of the civil rights movement and he was only 19 years old. He took a stand for what he believed in and told us all of the stories of his journeys throughout Mississippi and about the times he was jailed. He was a big member of SNCC (Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee) as well as the MFDP (Mississippi Free Democratic Party). It was really quite interesting to say the least. He even let the audience ask questions which allowed us to ask question about what we could do today to change.

I made a few connections to our class through Cobb. The first big one that came to my mind was definitely Johnson. He often said how no one wanted to talk about these problems and how no one wanted to even do anything just ignore them and hope that things would get better. However the whole point of SNCC was to address these problems and make them public so that they had to be dealt with. I also connected Cobb's stories to Delpit. Delpit often spoke about the codes of power and what not. Cobb and both groups he was an active member of (SNCC and MFDP) were going against the white power and the white culture and codes of power. My third connection is kind of a stretch but I figure it's relevant to our class even if it's not a connection. Someone asked what we as 19and 20 year olds could do today to fix society and his answer was education. He said we needed to fix the education system. He told us that a recent study showed that 76% of graduating seniors had and eighth grade (or lower)education level. It kind of reminded me of Anyon a little bit in the sense where she was the only who really talked about education in this sense. I kinda of think of what Cobb was talking about as tracking and how its doesnt work. Again it's a stretch but I think that it's defintely relevant.

2 comments:

Molly said...

it finally worked!!

Dr. Lesley Bogad said...

Yay! Your comments are working. Sorry I didn't get to go hear Cobb speak! Very interesting.