writing center

Hey there everyone. So I am writing this blog about the attending the writing center and what we did and why we went there. There were professors from all around the CUNY system and some students from the Graduate Center. Professors gathered around together to talk about how to improve the English work around the CUNY system. Also how to get students attention and make English assignments fun instead of a burden. There was a group where they took all the students English work and made books out of it. That was a great idea to come up with including everyone’s work. The best idea to get all the students to communicate and get them involved was the social media. Which we have been doing  assigned by Professor Coopers and also Professor Shwartz who is also from LaGaurdia Community College have been doing. Now a day’s everyone is on their smart phones on social media. We have been engaged on Instagram even out of class posting pictures about climate change. So even if we are not in class we have been thinking about class. Writing blogs was another thing we did in class. Instead of writing in papers and handing it in every week we wrote blogs. It was a great idea and also saved many papers saving the trees. I loved it and I would love it if other professors around the CUNY system did it too. 

Anti-Islamic Hate crime incident

A graph from the Southern Poverty Law Center shows the number of anti-Islamic hate crimes from the year 1995 to 2008; starting from zero to five hundred. Though there were Anti-Islamic hate crime incidents throughout time but it sky rocketed the year of 2001. That’s the year when 9/11 happened; it is understandable why the Anti-Islamic hate crimes increased that year. It is told that the reason behind 9/11 were Muslims. So the hate for the Muslims came out during that year causing all the hate crimes against the Muslims. Zeitoun might have been a victim of the Anti-Islamic Hate; because he is Muslim it was easy to target him. I’d say that because he was in New Orleans helping people in need and trying to save his business and property. There could not be any other reason to detain him but for the hate that the people had for the Muslims. The confusing thing about this graph was that it did not indicate what part of the country it was showing from.

in class blog on Zeitoun

Examples of Islamophobia are shown throughout the book Zeitoun; Islamophobia means the fear of Muslim people and being prejudice against them. In the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers we read about Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun who are living a typical American dream are being discriminated after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans because they are Muslims. One proof that comes from the reading is where Kathy converted to Islam and tried to explain to her friends and family but they took in a negative way. Eggers write “in the eyes of her mother and siblings it was as if she’d renounced her family and all they stood for” (Eggers, 67). According to Kathy’s family because she converted to Islam they feel Kathy has abandoned everything she stood for all her life. We also see how Islamophobia is affecting Zeitoun, where Zeitoun is taken away by military and put into military base inside a bus stand. Zeitoun is thinking about the incidents that happened to him, where he is “accused of terrorism” (Eggers, 218). Throughout the book we read about Zeitoun living his life with his family and after Hurricane Katrina he is helping neighbors and just trying to save his home and business. He was doing the right thing all along but because he is Muslim he was being judged. Being a Muslim can change the way people think and look at you. Looking into the matter how Kathy’s family reacted after she converted to Islam. They thought Kathy completely changed into a different person just because she converted.

zeitoun

In need of help our government always slacks behind and the common people comes in help to protect us. The common people are risking their lives to help others where our government who we rely on is not there for us. The book Zeitoun is about Abdulrahman Zeitoun who moved from Syria to New Orleans, who's living up to the American Dream and goes through all the crises before, during and after Hurricane Sandy. Zeitoun stays behind abondoning his family to help others after hurricane Sandy. When he could not help an elderly women he went out to seek help from the government. Where he tried to stop military personnel but no one stopped "ignored their canoe and their call for assistance" (Eggers, 101). The military personnel ignored Zetoun's call for help. This reminds m

Unconcerned Blog 3

Hello everyone I am back writing about the victims of Sandy again, this story really got me emotional. Its about Deedra Cheatham who is part of the Gowanus houses community based organization for Racial and Economic Equality. There’s a limit on neglecting issues that are so severe, where it comes to the victims of Hurricane Sandy they have been neglected. When people are in need of help we seek it from our government but they are not concerned. In her mother’s apartment the steam pipe exploded and she could not reach 911, 311 or 707 “the only way I got help was to stop the cop car that was patrolling around” (No help). In the time of emergency and help is this really how we get helped. We have a government that’s really “unconcerned” (No help) by unconcerned I mean NYCHA came three days later to check on Deedra and her family asking if they were okay and they did not even get a good response back from NYCHA. NYCHA does not have any answers. 

Blanking the Beach and Key Word

Good afternoon class, I am back writing in response from Naomi Kliens writing "Blanking the Beach" sharing if New York completed its job towards the people who suffered from Hurricane Sandy. New york specially the Housing Authority was really careless and incompetent towards it job and responsibilities. In the chapter Blanking the Beach, Naomi Klien writes about the Tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in 2004 and how the community that lived on the beach did not contribute to the economic growth of the country. If they were moved to a different place their “place could be put to a more profitable use” (Klien,67). Government is doing what they planned before the wave just making the “buffer zone looked like little more than an excuse” (Klien,67). Buffer zone is when people or communities are moved and government uses their place to more profitable use. This shows the negligence of Sri Lanka’s government towards its people. Instead of helping the victims Sri Lanka made that place into a vacation spot for the rich. After Hurricane Sandy many people from New York were displaced from their homes and NYCHA did not fix their homes. They were sent back to the homes that were “unlivable” to begin with.

Sandy Storyline Blog Two

Hello everyone, today I will be writing this blog about the victims of Hurricane Sandy which is required for my English 101 class. This assignment asked me to summarize two stories about the victims of Hurricane Sandy after listening to what happened to them from the website called “Sandy Storyline”. This website includes many heart touching stories of the people who suffered and are still suffering from Hurricane Sandy. From many I will be talking only about John Watson and Barbara Ross.

John Watson and his family lived in Coney Island till Hurricane Sandy flooded their home and they were displaced to Jamaica, Queens. They have been living there for two and a half months because there were molds in their home and it was considered to be unlivable. When it was time to move back home nothing was fixed “I do everything that is asked of me but nothing is done in the other end” (Watson). NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) had enough time to renovate his home to live in but they did nothing to fix it. This tells me that we can complain and tell the government all we want but they will not come in help for us. In the book climate casino by William Nordhaus, the motive of that book is to let everyone know what is going on about climate change. What’s the point of telling everyone if no one comes to help or does anything about these conflicts.

Where our government and authorities are not doing anything to help us we have people like Barbara Ross, who are willing to help the community. While majority of the people stayed home safe she felt “the best place to be is to be part of the community sharing the experiences good or bad” (Ross). She and her friend was trying to save a museum that he opened, asking the police for help they say “go home there’s nothing that you can do” (police). She volunteers for environmental group called “Times up” and they created energy bikes which runs by human power. So they pumped out the water from the museum using those energy bikes. It’s nice to know that there are still people who care about the community they live in. This aspect is very similar to a thought Nordhaus shares “people around the world need to understand and accept” (Nordhaus, 9). If everyone around the world and comes together all the problems can be solved.

http://www.sandystoryline.com/

Flood

New York City has not armored itself from the upcoming floods that it will face. Responding to the article from New York Times “New York is lagging as seas and risks rise, critics warn” by Mireya Navaro, she writes about all the researches we already have to make it a flood proof city, also what we already have done or have not done to make it so and why it has not been done. Navaro writes that Douglas Hill an engineer at Stony Brook University said that instead of planning to be flooded “state and federal agencies should be investing in protection” (Navaro). The people who have authority to make a change are the state and federal agencies so instead of planning they should be investing towards making a change. I agree with what they are saying because we are just wasting our money and time on researches and planning and doing nothing to save ourselves and our city where we reside in. We need to focus on our researches that we already have to make it a flood prove city, then we can move on to other issues like reduce polluting carbon dioxide which is actually causing our sea levels to rise and the floods.

Feedback

I received few comments from my peers on the first draft of my essay. My peers told me I had too many questions in it but also how those questions made them think into the matter. How there can be a good and a bad side of a situation. So I will try to cut down on my questions and look for another way to write the information down. My biggest concern about my essay is what if I go on with information that is not related to this matter itself. I need help in cutting down information and not go on and write about issues. 

My Response on New York Times Article

In this blog I will be responding to an article that I read in The New York Times “New York is lagging as seas and risks rise, critics warn” by Mireya Navaro and which was published in September 10, 2012. This article first tells the readers how far behind New York is to armor itself from the climate change; secondly what New York can do to improve itself from the upcoming floods; and lastly the high expenses to make New York a climate proof city. When this article was published Hurricane Sandy did not happen yet so she refers back to Hurricane Irene and how the city shut down the subway system and ordered the evacuation of 370,000 people as Hurricane Irene barreled up the Atlantic coast. Hurricane Irene weakened to a tropical storm so it really did not hit New York City so there was no subway shut down or evacuation for Hurricane Irene. But Hurricane Sandy hit New York City hard, there was a subway shut down leaving New Yorkers no way to transport, there was evacuation and there was no power in some parts of the city not to mention the flood in some places around the city. If New York took actions after Hurricane Irene we would have been ready for Hurricane Sandy and many more to come. New York planers suggested that new constructions and buildings should be developed risk free for the upcoming climate disasters but no such actions are imposed. A research group from stuny brook suggested in 2004 of installing movable barriers during hurricanes would block huge tides from entering the city, it wasn’t installed because the cost of installing such barriers could reach nearly $10 billion. There were such excuses like how these barriers could interfere with water ecosystems. Author tells us that five years ago 3 ½ inches of rain stopped the subway system for hours leaving 2.5 million riders no way in or out of the city. Improving our subway the transit agency spent about $34 million. My question is why do we wait till the disaster and spend our money fixing, why don’t we just build it climate appropriately in the first place. It’s interesting how politics plays a role in the readers mind while reading this article about climate change. Out of the top three comments, two readers took this article towards politics and how the republic party does not support climate change and democratic does.

Summarizing graphs from the text

To the students who are not taking Professor Cooper’s English class based on climate change, I am Sanjida and I am writing this blog summarizing two graphs from the book climate change by William Nordhaus. On chapter four page 39, there’s this graph which is an observatory made by some scientists from the year 1958 in Hawaii; showing us on the graph how carbon dioxide concentrations rise 25% from 1958-2012. On the graph the X-axis refers to the numbers of years and the Y-axis refers to carbon dioxide concentrations (parts per million). Again in chapter four page 46, there’s another graph which is showing us the trend of global temperature done by three research groups; on the X-axis it refers to the number of years and the Y-axis shows temperature change from 1900 in Celsius.

My response to Nordhaus's words

In the book Climate Casino, William Nordhaus gives us an example how we burn fossil fuels in our daily lives. We might not realize how much carbon dioxide we are putting in the atmosphere when we are going on a long drive, heating or cooling our homes or when we are cooking, but think of it as a whole not just you itself. Nordhaus shows us with an example of his own how 100 pounds is produced for driving just 50 miles and how a person will not pay attention while driving. But if everyone around the world produces that 100 pounds of carbon dioxide twice a week it will make about 30billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the world’s atmosphere. I find this very interesting how Nordhaus is telling us how we produce so much carbon dioxide in our daily lives then he states himself that he enjoys his lifestyles. We all love our current lifestyle, we get everything done very easily. Why would we go back to lives of a caveman? And work hard to get everything, like we don’t complain enough about the easy way out we have.