"Polking at The Issue"

POL AP2

DB 2022

INTRODUCTION

Are you familiar with what the snowball effect is? In the case that you're not, let me quickly educate you on the term. A snowball effect is a metaphorical process of a situation that starts rather small at first, but as you continue to let that snowball roll down that hill, it simply won't stop growing and growing into a greater danger. That's what the Mexican-American war is in a way to the USA, and here I am to explain to you exactly why this is the case.

In our class Policy, we've been going down the three branches of government and dissecting their processes to what feels often like it was down to the molecular level. For this unit, we're learning about the executive branch and its innerworkings, viewing previous presidents and the executive orders they had, along with their effects and intentions. Addressing our deep dive into this subject, our assigned action project is simply the equivalent of a regular AP history essay in the old fashion you're most likely thinking of.

In this essay, I've chosen the Mexican-American war due to it being a rather overlooked conflict of US history. Below you'll find an evaluation of the war and war policy, with an answered question of whether or not the Mexican-American war and its policies were just. Enjoy.

THE PROLOGUE OF A WAR

In November 5, 1844, James K. Polk had won the election for presidency as a "dark horse" (the underdog essentially) candidate for the Democrat party, and only by a small percentage as well in terms of votes against his rival Whig party candidate Henry Clay.

President Polk was incredibly invested in the idea of expansion in the United States, starting early on in his presidency with successfully negotiating a treaty to claim the territory of Oregon from the British, with the festering of a conflict not being too far ahead with Mexico.

Switching perspectives for a moment, we take a quick look at Mexico. Mexico had been awfully generous during the time, concerning themselves with Americans migrating into Texas (which was Mexican territory at the time), allowing a good handful of them to create lives for themselves in the state. This was an error on the part of Mexico, as the increasing interest in Texas from Americans began to spark conversation . During John Tyler's presidency, (which ended in 1845), he had begun proposing the idea of a treaty of annexation for Texas, speaking with US inhabitants in Mexico about signing and supporting the annexation. This was done in secrecy, as both the Texas citizens and other members in the discussion of the annexation were confident that if Mexico were to hear of the secret negotiations, they would reign hell on citizens and declare war.

Inevitably, Mexico ended up finding out about President Tyler's talk of annexation of Texas, which they then warned USA that any further discussion of the treaty would result in Mexico declaring war. This was the momentary end to any revisiting of the annexation, up until Polk came into office.

Mexico had been tense with its relations to America for a good few years before this event had occurred, as in 1842, the accidental capture of Monterrey from Mexico by the US happened. After receiving false news on an apparent war that had broken out between the USA and Mexico, a commander in the US army sent troops on ships over to Monterey to capture it from Mexico. Successfully having captured Monterey under the impression it was in war time, they only learned the next day that there was in fact, no conflict between America and Mexico and decided to give Monterey back, leaving back to America with their ships. This was also done during John Tyler's presidency, perhaps even in some way instigated by John considering his interest in Mexican territory during his run.

Revisiting Polk, he had absolutely no interest in easing these tensions. Strangely it seemed Polk, if anything, was a fan of John Tyler's work. The territory claim on Oregon had been in note of John Tyler's fear that the British were going to attempt making Oregon a slave-free state, which he believed would cause irreparable damage to the United States (which it definitely would've, but for the better), and the revisit to the annexation of Texas was seen by Polk (now known as the "Texas-Tyler" treaty) as the opportunity that he wanted to take, dismissing the warning.

The annexation of Texas ended up going through the Texan Congress and accepted the US Congress's proposal to join the United States, this was because it literally was just American immigrants in Mexico deciding whether or not they want it to be part of the USA, so inevitably it was going to pass as it was rigged in the favor of the United States. Shortly after this move, Polk attempted to bargain for the purchase of California (after signing the annexation of Texas) with Mexico, who refused and ignored Polk in negotiating any sort of purchase of California.

This all led up to the great cause of conflict: Deciding where exactly were the border of the Rio Grande.

WAR ENSUES!

Polk intentionally sent US troops to overstep the border between Mexico and US, after agitating Mexico with where the border line really is, provoking a patrolling squad on Mexico’s territory to open fire on US soldiers. This led to the death of sixteen troops on what was (at the time) Mexican soil. Polk decided to utilize the deaths of these US soldiers to falsely claim that these soldiers had their blood spilled on “American soil.” This was used to justify a declaration of war against Mexico, with the support and favor of democrats looking to commercialize and bank on the opportunity for more land. The vote to declare war was met with conflict from Congress, sparked into debate by Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln and others in Congress with something called “The Spot Resolutions", which was essentially a push for the exact location of where the corpses of the sixteen soldiers were found.

It was hard for Congress not to declare war when the House had an overwhelming vote to declare war, passing at a vote of 174 - 14.

This was overlooked and the declaration of war was passed in 1846 with overwhelming support from the states and its citizens, with the exception of New England who was anti-slavery and feared the expansion of land in America would "encourage the expansion of slavery" (which it did).

Safe to say, Americans were blood-thirsty for a war against an opponent they had full confidence they could beat. New land meant new opportunities, which was made even more promising when the land was in the hands of what Americans thought was a weak country. Why would Americans think such a thing about Mexico? Well it wasn't without reason, as Mexico’s political and economic system at the time struggled greatly due to constant coups, revolutions, and civil wars. The clear lack of stability in their systems and crippling debt surrounded by the negative take on their Roman Catholic monarchy created obvious opportunities for the United States, which was going through an economic flourish, to expand.

The war itself was quick, as territory after territory was captured by US forces. This war wasn't without losses, as 15,000 US soldiers had died in the war, with an undocumented amount of losses for Mexican soldiers that was guaranteed to be more than double the casualties that of the USA's.

Strangely enough, in terms of war policies issued, there was none that came up in my research. The only thing notable was the negotiations to actually end the war. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was proposed by Nicolas Trist, the chief clerk of the State department, who wrote to his wife in a letter regarding the proposed treaty, stated: “Knowing it to be the very last chance and impressed with the dreadful consequences to our country which cannot fail to attend the loss of that chance, I decided today at noon to attempt to make a treaty; the decision is altogether my own.”

There had been two previous attempts at negotiating a deal with Mexico, but skepticism of Polk’s associates and him, was refused and ignored. Trist and General Winfield Scott determined the only way for negotiation to be possible with Mexico was through winning the war.

Trist himself, in regards to proposing the treaty, was in favor of Mexico as he believed Washington lacked any sort of sympathetic understanding of the state that Mexico was in. The treaty that was proposed and accepted was made in defiance against President Polk, serving to aid Mexico with recovery efforts made by Nicolas Trist.

The US government was hesitant to accept the negotiation terms of the treaty in regards to paying Mexico 15 million USD, which was noted to be in “consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States.” The US also agreed to paying off any debts owed by American citizens to the Mexican government, which mainly was tied with American Texas immigrants.

The Mexican-American war officially came to an end on February 2nd, 1848.

JUDGMENT OF CONFLICT.

Do I believe the war on Mexico was just? Considering that the cause of conflict was due to an ancient conquistador mindset on behalf of President Polk, I’m inclined to side myself on the belief that this war was incredibly unjust. As explained earlier, this war was caused and initiated the moment 16 American soldiers were ordered to overstep the borders of Mexico to build a fort on the banks of Rio Grande. It was such a forced conflict that there were many, but clearly not enough, voices in the government branches outraged by the recklessness of Polk’s actions that there were people unable to even believe that what Polk was saying was true (The Spot Resolutions). Americans began to tire of the war the longer it went on, because bloodlust can only last for so long until you get sick.

The war was built on conflict fueled by men who were told "no" too many times when they wanted to get candy last minute in the check-out aisle. It wasn't needed and shouldn't have happened, but the idea of this conflict not happening at all creates interesting conflicts in how the rest of history would've gone.

For example, would America be established as a world power as soon as it did in WW1? How would politics be affected with the state of Texas under Mexican control? Then there's the California Gold Rush, which would've been interesting to see it never happen for the American people. There's a lot of things that fascinated me about this war that make me question if it was wrong in all the right ways.

Let me quickly put something into perspective. The Mexican-American war, as mentioned earlier, ended on February 2nd, 1848, and the Civil War began in 1861. 13 years after the great expansion of territory in the United States, the Mexican-American War has been hypothesized to have indirectly caused the Civil War, due to brewing conflict over the dispute of slavery as slave states increased during a period of time where, not so long before, John Tyler had thought the belief that the British had secret plans to push for Oregon to be a free state would be catastrophic for the United States.

Oregon.

Oregon is not exactly a big state to begin with, so of course an expansion as massive as the capture of Texas and the purchase of California was going to cause conflicts on a heavily-debated topic in a politically-heated country.

Even Mexico began to polish up their political system after getting that loss handed to them so easily due to disorganization and incredible debt, with the people unified under the willpower to no longer be viewed as weak by any other countries again.

So there were pros and cons to what the war inevitably concluded to, but I'm still settled on the idea that this war was unjustified as it was just seemingly cruel for the United States to do.

Genuinely the only positive thing that came out of the war in accordance WITH the war was how the "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo" was handled by Nicolas Trist. He seemingly was the only one that had any sense of empathy with Mexico during the war, not that I don't appreciate the "Spot Resolutions", but Nicolas actually made a difference in the war and wasn't dismissed with his negotiations in favor of Mexico.

And that's the snowball effect.

CONCLUSION

I don't think there's ever gonna be a case where I pass up the opportunity to research about Mexico when it comes to an action project. It's become my pride and joy to dump hours into looking into. In this scenario though, I was obligated to learn more about the USA than Mexico, but still nonetheless I managed to squeeze out a piece of history important to Mexico's political system history (which I never had any information on before). There is something I hate about this type of AP essay format, which I've addressed at the very beginning of my introduction. That's right, the snowball effect. There was a CVS-pharmacy receipt worth of information I needed to learn about to explain something that we called the "underlying" causes to a war. Something that wasn't the direct cause of conflict, but the stressor for a war. As you may have read, there were a lot of stressors for this war.

Point is, it was a lot. I don't really enjoy going down rabbit holes for an action project due to deadlines never feeling like they can honor my obsessiveness with going into detail about everything until it feels complete. Even as I was copying and pasting this text from a doc I had this information all written out on, I ended up adding two or three more underlying causes.

This also feels like my most lengthiest of my work yet, which you can thank the lack of any word count on the rubric addressing. 

CITATIONS

Treaty of Guadalupe - archives.gov

Annexation of Texas - Yale

Texas Enters the Union - history.com

Mexican-American foreign policy - rampfesthudson

Mexican-American War - openstax.org

"The Work of the 29th Congress" - history.house.gov

(BOOK) Guardino, Peter. The Dead March - A History of The Mexican-American War, 2017. 

 RENEWING THE ROOKERY 

URBAN PLANNING U2

D.BALDREE

INTRODUCTION

The Rookery's an old and impressive piece of Chicago history that has withstood the test of time with its incredibly refreshing design of utilizing sunlight to the degree that it does. Designed by Daniel Burnham and John Root in 1888, this building is located in the heart of Chicago at 209 S Lasalle. 

But that doesn't mean it can't be improved. In our class Urban Planning, we learned about how energy functions through big scales like a power grid, and smaller ones where we saw how electricity flows through a circuit. Having met with multiple FE guests in one go, I believe an impressive number of 9 this unit (all in one FE by the way), from the organizations Whitney, DIRTT, Corporate Concepts and Clune. It's a lot to summarize, but they're all involved in things like design process, renewable tactics, and constructing. 

With this knowledge, we took one final walk around Chicago for this unit. We visited multiple historical buildings after having a list composed for us. I decided to go with the Rookery, as it was mentioned in my reading of "Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson. The challenge for this project was to think of alternative energy sources to implement into these spaces and find a reasonably possible design to implement into this building. Without further ado, enjoy.

HISTORY OF THE ROOKERY

Before we really get into it, I want to provide a little bit more background on the history of the Rookery and why it's compelled me to pursue it over the other options.

The Rookery was made during a period of time where Chicago’s population was rapidly growing, with a population increase two times of what it was at the beginning of 1880 by the end of 1889. Large factories were being built and pulling numbers in from all over the states into Chicago. Burnham himself wanted to take on the challenge of building something taller than what originally was “allowed” to be built. The challenge came from the horrible and uncertain foundation that caused taller buildings to sink into the ground. 

I’ve known about this building for a while now. Having read the book “Devil in the White City”, the process of the building is significant to our architectural understanding of the buildings we have in place today here in Chicago. The name itself is captivating enough that it deterred me away from other buildings available for this action project. The Rookery. It’s fun to say, fun to think about, and in no way feels as if it fits its name. It sounds like a building meant to be by a harbor, but instead it’s centered in Downtown with an incredibly formal feeling to it. After doing additional research on the design process behind the building, the design of the building begins to make some more sense as to why it's structured the way it is.

The Rookery has unclear origins as to where its name comes from, but the one that makes most visual sense to me is that it originated from the crows that once lived inside the walls, “paralleled by the politicians who roosted there”, poking fun at their corrupted wickedness, which politicians weren’t keen on keeping if that’s what it meant. This was during the time where the Rookery served once as the city hall thanks to the Chicago Fire.

THE LAYOUT

The Rookery utilizes spiraling staircases in a magical and compelling way, complemented by the engravings that highlight the fantasy-like energy of building, with a masterfully crafted glass ceiling meant to . The lighting seems to be intentionally subtle, as if only intended to be just enough to allow the golden engravings of the place to shine through to captivate visitors.

The Rookery by James Caulfield, date unknown.

The Rookery by James Caulfield, date unknown.

NOW WE'RE REDESIGNING THE ROOKERY

Considering it isn’t mentioned anywhere on the official website or a good ol’ google search, it’s safe to assume that they’re on the Chicago power grid. Now, the Chicago power grid uses 7% natural gas energy, 30% coal-fired energy, 54% nuclear energy, and last but surprisingly not least 10% renewable energies. 

Making an assumption based on what I’ve seen in the building during my visit, it’s fairly minimalistic when it comes to what it needs to power. The strategic design of utilizing sunlight for the atmosphere as often as possible allows it to be less focused on powering lights in the building. The office spaces in the building are occupied by what I vaguely remember as law firms, maybe some kind of small jewelry store, and a Potbelly’s. The building itself is small in comparison to other giants in the city, making it require significantly less power than something like the Willis tower.

So now how do we go about improving upon a design that seems to utilize a fairly eco-friendly structure? Firstly, we can look at a list of what exactly takes up the most energy in most households. According to an article on visualcapitalist.com on what exactly consumes the most energy in a household, we get a rough idea of where the majority of this energy is being distributed. At a whopping 47%, cooling and heating takes up the majority of the electricity used in the building. So now the goal seems to be that we’ve got to figure out how to maximize the cooling and heating efficiency in the building to minimize the energy cost of it. 

A good while ago, I was introduced to the idea of “mud cement.” The execution of mud cement has proven to be in many ways more eco-friendly than regular cement, providing better insulation and cooling for buildings than regular concrete cement can hold up to. Ideally, it would make more sense to replace the insulation in the walls of the building that are easily “accessible.” There are of course disadvantages to having mud cement acting as a substitute for concrete cement. Mud cement is still, well, mud. Mud stays strengthened when it stays dry, making it a necessity that it stays as insulation within a wall, rather than exposed to sources of water that could deteriorate the material. Chicago’s got a handful of rainy days around the start of fall and throughout the spring, so making sure the exterior protecting the mud insulation is fortified would make this an optimal design. 

Another disadvantage of having mud as insulation would be the pricing of replacing the insulation for the building. Of course, this is only a slight disadvantage that I believe would pay itself over time considering that it’s saving money on the most expensive user of energy in the building.

As for the energy itself, the last thing I would want to do is taint the design of the Rookery, as I do have some sense of respect for Burnham and Root, so we’ll be staying away from obnoxiously large and obnoxious alternative energy sources. 

First up on the list would be solar panels as an alternative energy source. I chose this thanks to the flat surfaced roof that didn’t get much attention due to it being away from pedestrian eyes. Everybody’s fairly familiar with solar panels and their eco-friendly nature of attracting power from the great old sun. Given this isn’t designed to be a replacement for the energy system as a whole. If you look at the image, there’s already a problem indicated on the idea of placing solar panels: this building is being towered over by skyscrapers from every direction. 

"Roofing For The Iconic Rookery Building" by the Knickbocker Roofing and Paving Co., date unknown.

Next up would be biomass energy as an alternative. There’s a good amount of open space in the building itself that can allow for a biomass generator. Now biomass is an alternative energy source that creates power by burning natural resources, like plants or wood. Like every alternative energy source, there’s advantages and disadvantages. In this scenario, biofuel is surprisingly eco-friendly despite the fact that the idea of burning something to produce energy sounds quite unhealthy for the environment. Luckily, the idea of “burning” biofuel doesn’t always mean setting biomass on fire to produce energy, there are chemical processes that allow for less blazing approaches. Here is a list of alternative ways of “burning” biomass energy, along with another research article talking about the more specific advantages/disadvantages of biomass energy. A short summary in regards to the disadvantages to taking up biomass energy would be related primarily to the cost, as it can quickly add up in terms of purchasing from a supplier. I believe this is more related to integrating it as a sole power source, which is not my intention as I don’t believe it would make sense to do so. The goal is cost-efficiency and renewable. 

On the other hand, the advantages of using a biomass energy source would be that it’s fairly easy to be your own provider. As mentioned before, there was a good amount of open space available to be molded into something else entirely. Investing in an aquarium/interior garden within these spaces provides the vegetation and plant life to provide a good source of energy fuel. If the art of condensing these materials into solid biofuel is learned to some efficient degree, then you’re saving money on energy and purchasing fuel from sellers. You’ve now also got an amazing addition to a spectacular building that’ll pull in tourists, considering that the Rookery is pretty dead center in Downtown. Businesses buying out the space in the building pull in more customers, meaning that the building itself has a more reliable income from these rented spaces, which may mean more higher paying businesses will invest to get in on the foot traffic with their own rented spaces. It’s all hypothetical, but it does sound like it would essentially pay off whatever costs it would accumulate.

We’ve gone over two different types of alternative energy sources that could be plausibly applied to the building. Choosing one shouldn’t be too difficult as the commercial value of biomass energy sounds a lot more intriguing than solar panels that most likely wouldn’t pay back their costs due to the fact that they’re in an awkward spot. Aquariums and gardens are also pretty and could compliment the building itself if the right interior designer was assigned the job. 

CONCLUSION AFTER A LONG JOURNEY

Congratulations, you did it. You've read through 1650 words today, or maybe not. I won't be mad if you skimmed through it unless you're the teacher, who I've kind of sentenced to this fate of making sure that my grammar is on point and correct. This project was only worth 50 points by the way, and I managed to write another chapter's worth of information on something I could've done in 600. Anyways, the action project and unit was pretty fun. Electricity is a nice thing to understand because you're not left in this state of absolute mystery onto what's going on when you get your finger shocked by touching a door handle, or a power outage. Fun little things like that are always a good topic to bring up with friends that aren't in the know about it. That's all for this action project and conclusion, thank you for reading.

CRITICALLY PROBLEM SOLVING CPS

DB 2022 POL1

INTRODUCTION

    What if you had the power of an ever-expanding web of connections in the palm of your hand? At the click of a button that once pressed, continues to stretch further and further? You could send any message you wanted, that you needed. You could raise awareness about any subject you felt mattered to you, and all it takes is one little click. What could this power be? Who has it? You're probably imagining some big corporate job, HR level of control and power over a facility, some kind of CEO. Maybe you've figured it out by the title or it might've slipped past you, but this type of power is often overlooked until you really think about it. It's a principal. 

This is the subject of my action project here today as my class on policy explores legislation. We took time to explore what a bill is, the roles and functions that legislation has and lastly reviewing current bills attempting to go and turn into law. We got the luxury of meeting two great FE guests, Andy Davis and Troy LaRaviere (who is hands down my favorite FE guest I've met so far). Andy Davis is a citizen who's taken part in the legislation process and LaRaviere is the head of CPS principals. 

THE VOICEMAIL 

For this action project (as mentioned before), we had to look at current bills looking to become law. For me though, I didn't plan to look any further than the bill introduced to me by Troy LaRaviere. I've become so familiar with it I remember the number that accompanies it of the top of my head. That name and number would be HB5107, which is a bill that has thankfully passed house and is currently under review by the senate. This bill is designed to remove the restriction placed on CPS principals forming a union in Illinois, which would be big. 

So now my job is to find an important figure in my state that's representative of me and has an impact on HB5107.

After looking up my address on a website designed to find your appointed representative, in my case my senator representative, I found that Senator Villanueva was a perfect candidate for my voicemail. She supports HB5107 and can be found with her name supporting the bill, which obviously tilted the favor of persuasion into my hand. Senator Villanueva is a wonderful person, of Hispanic origin, and an active supporter of immigrant rights. Being Hispanic myself, I felt it was appropriate to utilize our shared background and interests in my voicemail to persuade and fortify her belief in HB5107. Below you'll see the work of the appeal to logic, emotion, and credibility in this voicemail. 

In the case that you're having difficulty understanding me, I've left the script below the voicemail for you to read through. Enjoy.

doc · Voicemail to Senator Villanueva.

Hola Senadora Villanueva,


I’m a resident around West Lawn and I’ve been particularly fascinated by a bill you’re pretty familiar with and, luckily, a part of. Recently got the luxury of meeting Mr. LaRaviere, who dropped by my school to give us a rundown of HB5107 along with his take on CPS and Chicago’s questionable political approaches. I’m pretty caught up with what’s going on for education, especially CPS, as not only am I a student who has experienced the pros and cons of public schooling in Chicago, but also the son of a teacher who’s had her fair share of protests against CPS and Lightfoot.


I still remember how horrible the food was at Curie. The only edible food was the pizza, everything else was either dry to the equivalent of sand in terms of texture or was stale enough it could break glass if you tried to. Safe to say I’ve never been a fan of how CPS has been run, especially not after doing a little bit of my own research after learning a handful from Mr. LaRaviere.


Mr. LaRaviere was pretty confused and infuriated by the decision made by CPS to pour more of the budget into Pre-K, as according to the official CPS website, the decision was made on the statistic that kids who participated in Pre-K did academically better than kids who didn’t, so obviously the best choice here is to dump money into something we already know works. On paper, it sounds amazing and a smart decision to fund Pre-K to give kids a better shot at academics.


Luckily for me, Mr. LaRaviere is really good at snapping people out of that fantasy world that CPS enjoys painting so much for the public and bringing it back to reality, specifically his reality. We shouldn’t be dumping more money into something we already know works well, nor on something that’s got a price not every family can afford to pay. On top of that horrible decision, you’ve got the quality of middle and high schools in its current state and an incoming 40% of CPS schools seeing a budget cut. Why are we funding Pre-K just to send kids into a horrible learning environment after experiencing a short-lived luxury? It’s a glimpse into heaven before a long fall through hell.


I think the worst part of it all is seeing the passionate teachers that work at public schools being severely limited in their true potential to create a learning environment. They print worksheets, read from textbooks to a class, and quite literally the only thing making it enjoyable is their character outside of the lesson. They show up every day with the energy to make the dullest of assignments genuinely bearable. When they’ve got that much spirit going for them, I begin to wonder what they would do if they could look at their classes in the same way an artist looks at an empty canvas.


Which is where this barricade begins to fester, formed by CPS and Lightfoot who actively have chosen time and time again to ignore teacher protests and demands for as long as inhumanely possible.


So I understand why you’re supporting this bill, I understand why it had to be pushed towards the hands of Springfield to make Chicago better. CPS needs a union with the kind of political power to actually matter at their table, to push for improvement. Principals are knee deep in the situations that district management (who I only imagine are sitting comfortably in their chairs away from the student body) are making decisions for. CPS also continues to try and argue that the position of a principal isn’t one that should be classified as “non-managerial employees in state law.” So far they haven’t even had a stated reason on why that’s the case or then they just feel like it doesn’t make sense. So then the counterargument here really is to look at cities like New York or San Diego, who realized the importance of principal unions and permitted it. If others can imagine it and ALLOW it, why can’t CPS? It just sounds like fear of change, meaningful change.


Point of this voicemail (as I’m wrapping up here) is just to let you know that some 18 year old high schooler in West Lawn loves what you’re supporting and wants you to keep supporting it.


Hasta luego Senadora Villanueva. And of course, good luck!

Untitled by Max Herman, 2017

CONCLUSION

It felt good to do this. It's easier to do something like this when you're writing to and about people you support and easily admire their efforts to improve the city that you grew up in. I'm talking to somebody I could see randomly showing up to my cousin's quinceanera, somebody I could recognize as family if need be. In that, I'm able to be comfortable in my own skin. You can tell if you read through the script as I'm talking, I don't always stick with the script. I'm able to improvise myself into my writing to make it be me. Me, in the sense that I'm able to place myself truthfully and honestly in the place I'm talking and reading from. This was a great action project that I feel I've gotten lucky with. It's not every day I'm able to look at a politician and see a cause that's respectable. Thank you for reading.