Week 4
A critical analysis of alternative "Declaration's" will be used to highlight the awareness and conscious effort to lay out a set of grievances and corresponding demands to the government. Excerpts from: Philip Foner's We, The Other People, will be the primary source documents used to highlight the discrepancies in the application of the democratic principles, as well as the consciousness and agency of communities left out and their attempt to actualize these principles.
Following their reading, we will engage in the class activity entitled "Counter-narrating the Constitutional Convention". In this activity, we will discuss the property, racial, gender and national restrictions limiting participation. We will have students identify any and all aspects of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution that they would have a problem with. We will identify alternatives and or changes we would have liked to see in the original document.
Lastly, we will explore the radicalization of the African, Asian, American Indian, Latino and white youth, through comparing and contrasting the organizational platforms of the Black Panther Party, the I Wor Kuen, the American Indian Movement, the Young Lords Organization and the Students for a Democratic Society.
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