Blog #3

Welcome back to my blog! On this episode, I am going to be talking about interests groups and their views on a specific issue. I am going to be analyzing both Democrat and Republican interest groups.

I chose America's Voice for the Democrat side and Federation for American Immigration Reform for the Republican side. These two groups are involved in immigration, which as of right now, the subject has become very controversial. Right now there are multiple issues tied to immigration but the most prominent issues are the separation of families at the border as children are being separated from their families when they cross the border, and they are being put in cages.

America's Voices

The mission of this group is to harness the powers of American voices and values to enact policy change that guarantees full labor, civil and political rights for immigrants and their families. An artifact that shows the stand of this group is shown in this post by group: https://bit.ly/2Jj3Gcu

"Republicans control the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Yet, Trump is blaming Democrats for the Republican failure to deal with this challenge in an intelligent and serious manner. In fact, over the past two years, Trump and his immigration advisor Stephen Miller made sure to blow up every serious effort to enact bipartisan immigration legislation. Instead, the centerpiece of Trump’s border policy has been to rip thousands of toddlers from their parents — a practice both immoral and ineffective. Now the Trump administration is gearing up to restart this dehumanizing and cruel policy."

This portion of the post shows the group's bias towards the Democrat side, which is not surprising. The post criticizes the decisions made by the Republican party by mentioning that they are the ones have control of the white house, thus making it seem like Democrat seats are not involved or do not agree with the current ideologies. The post also criticizes the effectiveness of the Republicans as they mention that even though they have been in control for over 2 years, they still fail to do the right solutions to issues. This group uses specific words to transmit the message to the public such as cruelty, immoral and ineffective. All of these words have a negative connotation, thus making the Republican party as an inadequate organization to be part of.

Federation for American Immigration Reform

The mission of this group is to seek to reduce overall immigration to a more normal level and allow America to manage growth, address environmental concerns, and maintain a high quality of life. FAIR puts the interests of American citizens and future generations ahead of big business and partisan demands. 

This video shows the groups bias towards immigration by sharing an anecdote of an immigrant woman whose son was killed by an undocumented immigrant. By sharing this video they are portraying the message that immigrants are only here to harm the country and other American citizens. However, the group does not really take into consideration that immigrants do have a positive impact too, one undocumented immigrant doing something improper, does not mean that all of the immigrants are seeking to harm the U.S. Showing only one side of the story makes this message biased to the Republican side as it is commonly known that Republicans have the ideology that immigrants are not good for the country. This group uses rhetoric devices such as pathos to present their message. By making a video of how an immigrant caused a tragedy and setting a sad mood, they expect the public to emotionally connect to their ideas and ultimately support them. 

The missions of these groups differ in a very evident way as the
The democratic group supports and believe in the idea that immigrants are good for the country, while the Republican group does not support immigrants as they cause harm and are criminals. The group that I resonate with is America's Voices because I agree with the idea that immigrants need to be supported and accepted by this country. I believe they deserve a chance to do something better. The reason why I do not agree with the other group is because I am an immigrant, and I know that I am not here nit harm the country but to contribute to it, and certainly there are more people like me who are doing nothing but good actions. There are actual statistics that show that more undocumented immigrants do not increase the rate of murders.

Blog #2

Welcome back to my blog! In this episode, we are going to be talking about political parties and concentrating on one political party to understand their ideologies.

Political parties connect the people to the government by presenting ideologies on different subjects and the response or solution the government should execute. People usually link to the government by identifying with a political party, e.x. Democratic Party, Republican Party. Political parties are an important linkage institution because these parties transfer the public's opinion to the government so that better decisions can be made according to the public interests.

The political party that I chose to write about is the Democratic, which is the party I connect to as it has liberal ideologies, and if you read my previous post, you probably know that I was rated s solid liberal. Some of the main beliefs of this party include raising incomes and restoring economic security for the middle class, create good paying jobs, fighting for economic fairness and against inequality, bringing Americans together, combatting climate change, and building a clean energy economy. This party differs with the ideologies presented by the right, some of the ideologies include immigration, gun control, and abortion.

An artifact that shows the point of view of this party is their opinion on immigration posted on their website, that reads "Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society. We will challenge and dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity. Democrats will promote racial justice through fair, just, and equitable governing of all public-serving institutions and in the formation of public policy. Democrats support removing the Confederate battle flag from public properties, recognizing that it is a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future. We will push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country."

A  limitation of this rhetoric is that it would be hard to be able to remove the Confederate flag from all public places as many people feel like that is a symbol of patriotism. In addition, almost all of the southern states have kind of like an attachment to it and it is part of their history, which would be disregarded if the Confederate flag were to be removed. In addition, people might appeal to that decision as it may be breaking the first amendment. Though I strongly believe that the Confederate flag has a negative connotation for many people.

The politician affiliated with the democratic party that I chose is Gavin Newsom. He is married to Jennifer Siebel Newsom. They reside in Marin County with their four children. Gavin grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Santa Clara University on a partial baseball scholarship, graduating in 1989 with a B.A. in political science. After college, Gavin sold orthotics and worked as an assistant at a real estate firm. In 1991, Gavin recruited investors and founded PlumpJack, a wine shop, which he grew into a thriving enterprise of 21 businesses including wineries, restaurants, and hotels.

An artifact that reveals the politician's point of view is a post including a video of how housing affordability Homelessness is becoming a major problem in California that has to be addressed

Video: https://vimeo.com/253060924

The video talks about how he is going to build 3.5 million affordable housing by 2025 by  Identifying a new funding strategy, increasing investments can exponentially housing output, and rewarding cities that produce housing and punishing the ones that do not.

The video uses specific phrases to effectively communicate their message. By saying that the cabinet will be committed to solving homelessness and not just manage it, the message causes a positive reaction from the audience as the word commit portrays a strong connotation and establishes a sense of ethics. In addition, the video is more biased to the right as it mentions that taxes need to be revamped in the sense of them being raised in order to build more affordable housing and solve homelessness, which is a more liberal ideology that taxes need to be increased to fund social programs.

Blog #1

Hello! My name is Dahim and I am an AP Government student at Rainier Public School in San Jose! I was born in Mexico from a Spanish man and a Mexican woman. I immigrated to the United States in 2015. The purpose of this blog is to be used to share my political beliefs and to share more about what I learn as I keep developing my political views.

After taking the pew research questionnaire, I found out that my political typology is Solid Liberal. This means that I believe that immigrants strengthen our country and that there is still work to be done in order to address racial discrimination.

I believe these things because I have seen the positive impact immigrants have in the country, some even have a more positive impact on the country than non-immigrants. Some examples are the people who benefit from DACA; most of them continue with their education and are doing more significant stuff than the average American. Also, I believe racial discrimination is still a major problem in some parts of the country as I see that the Black and Hispanic incarceration rate keeps going up. My past experiences that have shaped these beliefs are watching different people Some issues that I care deeply about are immigration, racial discrimination, and gun control because those are issues that I feel are the ones that affect me and my community the most.