Breen
English 9;4
12/3/14
“The Crisis in Ferguson” I chose Cartoon 8, and I think that the cartoonist’s message is referring back to Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech that he called to end racism in the United States. In the cartoon, there is a police officer that is shooting a MLK statue that reads “I HAVE A DREAM”. In the Ferguson case, there are claims that indictment that the white police officer that shot the black male citizen was because the male was black, so that was why the police officer walked out free. The cartoon shows that America is doing the complete opposite of what MLK dreamed of. MLK dreamed of being a country of everyone being equal, no matter if you were black or white. In the Ferguson Crisis, it’s almost hurting to see that these types of things get so out of hand with racism. That was not what MLK fought for in the American Civil Rights Movement. I think that the intended audience is those who were activists in civil rights so that they could see how naïve some people have turned because of this Ferguson case. I do agree with the intended audience because it letting those people see what has been happening in the country but I also can disagree because maybe those people are too shocked to even want to know what the country has turned into.
Cartoon 1 and Cartoon 2 are opposing viewpoints to me. In Cartoon 1, Lady Liberty symbolizes liberty, justice, and peace. She holds her arms up like in Cartoon 2 where the outline of Mike Brown also holds his arms up. I think that it is an outrage now that they have Lady Liberty putting her hands up because of this violence. In Cartoon 2, it changes because we really do not know if Mike Brown put his arms up saying “Don’t shoot”. It’s asking if this was set up by the police, the mob or the media. It makes us wonder if liberty, justice and peace is really what the United States is.
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