Fight the Power

First, be sure to read Chapter 2 in Good Reasons. Then read the following articles about the planned protests on the Republican convention. While I did not specifically mention a required blog entry in class, many students noticed that there is a required entry for Thursday. My decision is that you may write a blog entry for Thursday (due late Wednesday), but that it's not absolutely required. If you complete the entry, it will count towards your required fifteen for the seemester.

With the Republican convention beginning in just a few days, many news articles and editorials have been preparing us for massive protests at the convention. Because these protests will be widely covered, it's important to understand how the coverage might be framed. With that in mind, I've culled a few articles and editorials from The New York Times and other newspapers that seek to understand the protestors and their effect on the convention.

As you read, see if you can identify any specific language that might frame the protests positively or negatively, any assumptions the authors might be making about the protests, or any logical fallacies (ad hominem attacks, etc). We'll be discussing these articles in class on Thursday, and while you are not required to do a blog entry on one of these articles, you should still be prepared to discuss them. Keep in mind that I'm including a mix of articles and editorials here.

• "Signs? Check. Chant? Check. Ride to New York? Not Quite," Michael Brick, New York Times.
• "As Convention Nears, Uncertainty Over Protest Location Creates Potential for Trouble," Jennifer Steinhauer and Diane Cardwell, The New York Times
  
• "Bernadette Malone: NYC errs in playing nice with protesters," Bernadette Malone, The Union Leader
  
• "Convention Headaches," Editorial, New York Times.

Note: I just came across Beau Bennett's post, "Effectiveness of Public Protests," and Beau's post raises an important question that we failed to address in the first class: what are the rhetorical effects of the protests themselves? Beau raises several good questions about whether public protests are effective in changing what they are protesting.