This is what it means to say Harlem

Pants sagging, weed smoking, ignorance, and black people. Is that what you portray Harlem to be? Yes there are young males sagging their pants, smoking weed, and being "ghetto" or ignorant but thats not what Harlem is all about. Harlem is a place in which diversity exists. There are different races and cultures that reside here. Beautiful sites that one can visit such as Marcus Garvey Park or the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. building. Though this beauty exists, no one realizes it. Why? Maybe because the drugs, violence, and murders of people of their own race cover the beauty. News about a young black male shooting another over stupid reasons. Robberies, fights,and shootings define Harlem if you ask any other person thats not from there. When will this violence and negativity end?- Jaritza Rodriguez

There was that law of life,so cruel and so just,that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same"

According to me ,this law should rule everyone 's life,because  you cant be living without any progression and expect to live the same kind of life with someone who is struggling to make things happen.
This is God on his thruth'anyone who's not willing to work should not have the right to eat.
If you not willing to move forward , so be ready to serve as steps in someone else ascension

Declaration of Independence

We, the nation of United College Students are endowed by the creator with certain unalienable rights, including free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of assembly, free release of information, and student publication. We secure the rights to equal opportunity for education. No matter race, ethnicity, sex, background or financial status. The history of the present college administrators is a history of repeated injuries and absolute tyranny over college students.

The following is a list of grievances revealing the violations of our rights by college administrators:
-He has blocked information for public access.
-He has excluded access to computer labs for certain students.
-He has violated rights for free publication.
-He has limited education based on financial status.
-He has charged us for reservation of classrooms.
-He has restricted us from education based on extensive background checks.
-He has taken our right to freely express ourselves through physical appearance.

We are outraged by this mistreatment and we appeal to the supreme judge of education for the rectitude of our intentions. College administrators have suppressed our rights as students. If our demands are not satisfied, we will wage war upon the justices of the education system. As free and independent students we declare full power to levy war, conduce peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent students may right of do!

Signed,
Melanie, Ronald, Adel, Adrian, Vitali

All men are created equal: yeah right!

I agree with the first part of this quote that all men are created equal in a sense that we are created equal in a by x and y chromosomes that conform to human development but as we are born we are at the mercy of the government. Whether we are located in the United States or a third world country, we as people will always have something opposing us. The ties of our racial background or our sexual Preferences, we all have something holding us back from being as an equal to someone else. A gay man would not be equal to a heterosexual man because it is not believed in that a man and another man should have a relationship and there are laws in which it fights against gay marriages. By this unfair and unjustified means of ruling gay men and women would less likely to be accepted and considered equal to straight men and women. As well as having a racial background as being black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, one race can be considered superior to another and lead to an unequal benefits. During the time of the declaration of independence to a tee there would be no slavery but as wee know that didn't happen. Why would we make slaves of people equal to us if we knew that wasn't true. We now live in a government that tries to conform to the constitution and declaration and we might agree that we have agreed on creating equality but there are still people but there are still people out there that are still superior and higher than we can achieve which still show inequality. -Brandon Figueroa

A man can change anything! His face, his family, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there's something a man can't change. A man can't change his passion

I could some what agree with this quote because almost all of that it's true but the way our passion can't change. In many different ideas our passion can constantly change from on thing to to another. In an example, a man can passionately love a woman, they cam get married, have children, and live out their days together. If in 10 to 20 years the man can lose that passion he had towards his wife and fall out of love for her. He found a new passion for some other woman he met at some supermarket when he was shopping for food. In this situation we can see that the man's passion change from one person to another. how can we say that passion will never change but now that I think about it his passion never left him but only move from one person to another. As well for Steve Jobs, he had a passion to make Apple and work on it for many years without getting tired of working there and when he got fired he still pursued his dreams and starting a new company that allowed him to use his passion to produce something great. Passion his really that force to compel you to do something that you love. It is not the idea of losing passion but the idea of changing it for something new. -Brandon Figueroa

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"

This quote makes me think about how my mother always said Spanish would be useful to me in the future. As it well has been. Being bilingual opened many doors for me even from when I was younger. However, this quote does not only refer to the number of languages you speak. Speaking only one language does not make you dumb. If you limit your language, you are taking away opportunities from yourself that you will probably need in the future. Soon you will regret that you gave up those opportunities when they could have given you the chance to do greater things. If you speak slang with your friends and you go for a job interview and say, "Yo my name is Chris," you have just taken that opportunity from yourself. Limiting yourself by using language as if  you were in the hood. We need to speak properly if we want to be taken seriously.Even when we are not speaking, to be taken seriously in writing is just as important. If someone does not know you and they are reading an email from you and it is not well written, that can jeopardize how that person views you.
If you choose not to expand your language, use a broader vocabulary, or just speak properly it can close many doors for you and leave you right where you started. The way you present yourself means everything today. If you have fancy clothes but no knowledge to match, no one is going to care what you say. 
There is a big difference between "Yeah" and "Yes Sir."
-Melanie Ginel

"This is what it means to say The Bronx"

Puertorican, Dominican, Cuban, Black, White, low income housing, bodegas on every corner and bad schools. Yeah, that's The Bronx for you. Notice is THE Bronx and not just Bronx. It's The Bronx, 'cause we make a statement. Even in spanish we say 'yo soy de El Bronx. ' Although I was born in Jersey, I'm a Bronx girl at heart. Been there since I was about six. Public school is the best school I believe. And I've always lived in neighborhoods where everyone knew my name. Where I spent most of my time growing up, 174th and Boston Road everyone knew I was Marla's daughter which kind of meant ''watch your step 'cause I'll tell your mom.'' The Bronx means home. It's loud and fast paced and I love it. It's not as fast paced as Manhattan, it's perfect. To me, The Bronx means trying to move up and make a better living for yourself. People always say, "Yeah I gotta get out the hood." The Bronx is big, but it is small in the sense that a lot of people know eachother. Whether they met at a party, went to the same middle school or grew up onthe same block. When people hear you're from the Bronx you see their expression change. They think you walk around dodging bullets and running from cops. That's not always the case. I'm a Puertorican girl from the Bronx and I'm proud to say that at 17, I am a high school graduate, I am employed, and I am going to college.
The Bronx means doing what you gotta do to get ahead.
 -Melanie Ginel

“It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly” Oscar Wilde

          Everywhere I turn, whether it is movies or music videos, I see beautiful people. Even on a lesser scale, in my day-to-day life I see the same thing walking thru stores, I see them staffed by beautiful people. I am not complaining by any means, but are all the people unemployed ugly? Are opportunities only given to those that are physically blessed? Does inner character play any part? As the saying goes “beauty is only skin deep”, this is a mantra that takes some a long time to learn. They instead depend on their looks to take themselves to the top, once their true ugliness begin to show, it’s to late. They fail to realize that issue are with themselves, instead they call anyone that dare to call out their ugliness “haters”. Ugliness is not always a physical characteristic. Regardless of your outward beauty, the ugliness from within can over shadow any beauty queen.

Response by Nigel Allen

“Our generation has had no great war, no great depression, our war is spiritual, our depression is our lives” Chuck Palehnick

            When I hear stories from the older generation, they often speak of wars, times of hardship, and times of injustice. When compared to my present day conditions, there is no actual comparison. The Vietnam war occurred, there was great protest, the nation watched every detail and aspect of the war unfold. Present day most of people do not realize that there is still a United States lead war in the Middle East. We are now a nation of individuals, soul seekers. There is not a great cause for us to rally around. Our concerns are now focused on I not we, we have become takers and not givers, users and not contributors. This has pushed us further apart from each other to the point where we are more affected by Instagram or Facebook being down, than the conflicts around the world. Is it that the term “Ignorance is bliss” and “What I don’t know can’t hurt me” has become a unified credence? Do we need a major event, a great war, great depression to remind us that there is more to us than ourselves?

Response by Nigel Allen

"This is what it means to say Santo Domingo"

     Wherever it is that you're located there will always be loud music playing. When you're trying to call the cops to crash the party next door that's keeping you awake at night, only to realize the entire station is already at the party, getting their groove on. Where people still sell fruits in carts and go door to door asking you do buy some. Where you could go to any restaurant, try anything on the menu and you'll know it's going to be good. Where tostones are a side dish to every meal, and platano con salami is like milk and cereal for breakfast. Where you'll be extremely lucky if you have air conditioning, better yet electricity, at night. The place where the sun burns like no other country, all year long. The place where every night you'll see a group of people playing dominoes. Where you'll know they're playing dominoes as they slam them down for the whole neighborhood to hear. This is what it means to say Santo Domingo.

-Adrian Reyes

"Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent." Adrian Reyes

     I agree with this quote. Whenever we hear of celebrities it is usually to criticize them. All of the best reviewed articles or TV shows about celebrities involve criticizing them. Whenever a celebrity does something great we will always expect them to do something even better. Anything less will involve instant criticism. It gets to the point where nothing that they do will be enough, they'll always be criticized for not matching or topping that one great thing that they did.

     What's important of this quote is that celebrities wouldn't agree with it. Celebrities want to entertain the crowd, but very few could constantly keep them pleased. This relates to the article for homework yesterday Dying to Live Forever by Katie Baker: "go out in a blaze of glory or else disappoint us."

"All media works us over completely" -Marshall McLuchan

        Why does this say '"Works us over'" and not 'over works us'? Would that make sense? It does to me. Think, all media overworks us completely. Hmm. Maybe it means the same thing. Whatever.

        Well if all media ‘works us over’; maybe it means that we spend too much time connected to the media. Even though some people claim not to have Facebook; television and the internet itself count as media. Even the radio is media. Media works us over could also mean that it takes to much out of us. Or causes too many problems. I’ve always said that Facebook destroys relationships rather than building them like it was designed to do.

        This quote says media works us over completely. Completely. Well I'm not sure if I completely agree. Maybe the media takes up some of our time, but not all of it. Then again there are people who get no sleep because of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. The media, the social aspect of it anyway, has taken over our lives. Yeah, media is also news articles about war and politics and the economy; but nobody cares about that. They want other news. About whos doing who and why. People want useless news that’s not even news, it’s gossip! And the media feeds the people what they want.

        All media works us over completely; ALL MEDIA. Yeah, all media doesn’t, bus most of it does. It takes time from our lives, keeps us from our families, distracts us from doing work and stresses us out. Do you remember a time before Facebook when you didn’t have to stress about who wrote on your boyfriends or girlfriends wall, or who liked their status? Today, it’s all about likes. Like this, like that. Like ME. Please ?

-Melanie Ginel

"All media work us over completely", Marshall McLuhan " The medium is the message"

This quote gives a strong sense of the impact that the mass media has on our society. This quote shows how the media is taking people's lives from them. It confuses the person and convinces them to want what they don't really want. I've seen a few people who love acting. They start to watch doctor shows such as "Scrubs" and "Grey's Anatomy". They become influenced by the show's drama and fake doctors that they think it's real. They start to say "hey, I want a fun job with all that drama" but, in reality the shows that they are watching on television have a cast of actors playing the role of doctors. My friends aren't stupid but, they are mixing reality with fantasy. Advertisements also brainwash people in a way. They have the power to convince you to buy things you don't really need. For example, let's say a man has a blender that home that he only uses one time in a year span. He turns on the television and there is an advertisement on. There is a blender on sale and it spins 10x his current blender's speed. So he says "wow that's fast, I need a new blender anyways", sound familiar? The media makes it that everything you watch or hear, you must need. There is no such thing as want anymore, it's only need now.  

-Ronald Kuang