Creating A People's Assembly

This is the 3rd and final unit of the Junior Humanities course "A Nation's Argument." In this unit, 1960's, we learned about the events of the 1960s and the Civil Rights era. We studied the Bill of Rights and the amendments that give Americans rights, and how they apply to people. We also learned about the lynching era where African Americans were hanged for committing minor offenses We also attended a Yale University Open Courses online lecture about the Civil Rights Era as well as the Selma march and the Watts riots in Los Angeles. The main focus of this unit was to create our own people's assembly. We wanted to discuss policing in Chicago. We were able to create a format and roles for each other to create this assembly.  We brought in 4 guests that were able to talk to us about policing. We had one Chicago Police Officer, 2 community activists, and one researcher from NYU. We sat down with our guests and had a conversation about communities in Chicago and how they react to police presence. We also discussed policing in schools, immigration, and police officer suicide. For my project, I chose the issue of police suicide. It was very cool to hear first hand from an officer about why some police get depressed and how it is more than just trauma, but a combination of things. For this project, I created a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis about police suicide. I also did research and found statistics to re-enforce my argument.

In conclusion, this was a very interesting project and class. I am happy with how I performed in this class, even if I always wasn't 100% about what I was doing. I thought this last project was a neat way to tie in our communal project that was the policing assembly. I liked how each student got to pick the issue they wanted to address. I am proud of the research that I did, and I am proud that as a Junior cohort, we were able to come together and have a real-world discussion with real-world people.