Project Description:
In the justice project, the whole main idea was a simple question, "What is Justice?"
I love questions like this, the short but still most detailed question you can come up with. But before we answered that question for ourselves, we needed to see how others have in the past. We studied the likes and works of The Dahli Lama, in his essay "Compassion as a question of Justice". That and Emanual Kant, Howard Zinn, and the works of many others in my case. All their thinkings go beyond what is just "fair" but how what being fair now means for the future generatons of mankind. Very interesting stuff. Next we wanted to focus on the Environmental Ethics, like conservationism versus preventionism. Which is really about wanting to fight the present wars or the future wars, weather to make more of what we got or to protect what we have. This as well as the previous philosiphors tied into the Bears Ears Debate. This was in my opinion the best part of this unit. Because for once there was another side. The problem with humanities classes I find in most cases is that because the teacher is going to be biased, most kids will take what the teacher says as fact and just agree. But for this Debate the teams were split into Agree and Disagree with establishing the Bears Ears National Monument. After that was a few movies, True Justice and Beyond Standing Rock. Both of which I have forgotten but I still feel as moved by them when I first watched them, very powerful stuff.
During this time, we were doing Justice Monologes, one read aloud to the class the other in video format. ('cause Covid's a thing)
The first one was a piliminary "What is Justice?" Monologe:
The next one was the video and it was meant to gom against what i view as the most injust envioronmental problem in the US, how the US refuses to use Diesel Engines even though they are so much better.
I love questions like this, the short but still most detailed question you can come up with. But before we answered that question for ourselves, we needed to see how others have in the past. We studied the likes and works of The Dahli Lama, in his essay "Compassion as a question of Justice". That and Emanual Kant, Howard Zinn, and the works of many others in my case. All their thinkings go beyond what is just "fair" but how what being fair now means for the future generatons of mankind. Very interesting stuff. Next we wanted to focus on the Environmental Ethics, like conservationism versus preventionism. Which is really about wanting to fight the present wars or the future wars, weather to make more of what we got or to protect what we have. This as well as the previous philosiphors tied into the Bears Ears Debate. This was in my opinion the best part of this unit. Because for once there was another side. The problem with humanities classes I find in most cases is that because the teacher is going to be biased, most kids will take what the teacher says as fact and just agree. But for this Debate the teams were split into Agree and Disagree with establishing the Bears Ears National Monument. After that was a few movies, True Justice and Beyond Standing Rock. Both of which I have forgotten but I still feel as moved by them when I first watched them, very powerful stuff.
During this time, we were doing Justice Monologes, one read aloud to the class the other in video format. ('cause Covid's a thing)
The first one was a piliminary "What is Justice?" Monologe:
The next one was the video and it was meant to gom against what i view as the most injust envioronmental problem in the US, how the US refuses to use Diesel Engines even though they are so much better.
Justice Monologue 1:
"It is mid July, 1981. In Skidmore, Missouri, Ken Rex McElroy was shot twice and killed, in front of 63 people. 63 people were there, watching, and during the trial, the prosecution had such little eveidence it was a struggle to prove it was a murder in the first place, Is this injustice? Ken Rex McElroy was also a murderer, rapist, and had an amazing layer from his days in the mob. Ken met his wife when she was 12, she got pregnant at 15, they got married when she was 16. He had 10 children, to 3 underage women. When the law caught up with him, he paid off the prosecutor or intimidated the victim of his crime until they dropped the case. He was killed with two gunshot wounds to the head, and died infront of his underage wife and kids at the age of 47. Is this justice?I think, neither. This is whatever you want to say it is. The Dahli Lama in his essay “Compassion as a question of Justice” says that all people have the capacity to change. This would include Ken Rex McElroy, has the capacity to change, even if he made absolutely no intention of doing so. The Dahli Lama also says that I should be able to forgive but just not forget this horrible man. I disagree. Most people may change but no not everyone has that capacity. Howard Zinn, author of Law and Justice, says that law and justice are entirely different things. Which is when i bring in, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, or, after therefore because of. Law is the tool we have shaped to administer Justice and injustice to those we see entitled to each. Emmanuel Kant tells us that we should treat people as ends and not the means to them, and that all people have value and are worthy of life. But what do we do with the bad people? What about people who are so awful they practically throw their value away? That’s where the law comes in, and that's where we deliver the Injustice that the one is deserving of, and the justice their victims are entitled to. That feel is why we say the Court, or, Law, has ruled in favor of the defendant or prosecutor. By giving to one justice, you take away another's, that is an injustice. It is almost an impossibility that you could somehow give two opposing sides what they want and call it justice. I think I can live in a world where even the people like Ken are not treated fairly. I can't live in a world, like ours, where doing what is right under the law and doing what is just are very different things. I can live with knowing that someone is getting what they deserve, justice or injustice. A world where we can see the intent rather than just take the lawmaker’s word for it much like Kant suggests. I believe that getting Justice is up to you, as with injustice. That we cannot live in a fully just world because what others think is right will always be different as long we have our free will. That, I believe, is all that justice is and will be. "
Justice Monologue 2:
The Justice Project Defence
What did you end up doing for your project?
For my project, I did work on Environmental Justice. Originally there was a group, but several miscommunications lead to that basically being dissolved and nothing getting done. So, after not being in contact with them for a whole week, I decided to do my own project and designed a multi-staged plan for planting trees in the 416 fire’s burn area near Durango. The plan never actually went into effect as I never found the time to do it myself, thus part two ensued. Part two was my draft of a letter to the editor in chief of the Durango Herald. I told him all about my plan, and almost all of my research too. I ended up with research on how to plant trees that are cheap, and good quality. As well as non invasive species of them. Not only that but the permissions needed for planting. I planned everything out to the point that I just needed a team to help me, and we could get on our way.
How did your project reflect your personal philosophy of justice?
I feel like this project has a lot to do with my personal philosophy of justice. My philosophy revolves around Justice being what you make of it, a complete social construct that has humankind ever more reaching for it. My project revolves heavily around that, how I feel it is an injustice nothing has been done already. It is an injustice to ourselves, to our town, and to our area. So I figured it is about time someone does something about it. I believe it is just a way to have written a letter to the editor, as I have every problem figured out about planting trees in the 416 fire burn area, except for the problem that I need more hands on deck. I looked into my online resources about "How to write a letter to the editor" and what I found is that it is mostly used over time and in a way to reach as many people as possible. I feel it brings about more justice that more than just me even knows that we need to do something about this, thus it is more justice for all that I do this. As far as my message, I wanted it to be personal and utilize my reasoning. I want to make the connection that it is our backyard and that we need to fix this. It is more in line than any other ideas out there as this is just a letter. Being too technical was the only other feasible option, and that really turns people away. Which goes against my idea of bringing people together.
Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull off your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? Explain!
I feel that I was almost entirely unsuccessful in my original idea of actually planting the trees, but in some aspects I think this is better. The original idea had only 8 kids wanting to really plant trees, but with this letter I may have lost 8, but I gained 1,000. More than ever I feel like I'm actually shaping public opinion on this issue and getting people hyped for it rather than just doing the manual labor. In the end, I feel like the creation of making it bigger was the real success as well as the biggest loss, or really the only loss.
For my project, I did work on Environmental Justice. Originally there was a group, but several miscommunications lead to that basically being dissolved and nothing getting done. So, after not being in contact with them for a whole week, I decided to do my own project and designed a multi-staged plan for planting trees in the 416 fire’s burn area near Durango. The plan never actually went into effect as I never found the time to do it myself, thus part two ensued. Part two was my draft of a letter to the editor in chief of the Durango Herald. I told him all about my plan, and almost all of my research too. I ended up with research on how to plant trees that are cheap, and good quality. As well as non invasive species of them. Not only that but the permissions needed for planting. I planned everything out to the point that I just needed a team to help me, and we could get on our way.
How did your project reflect your personal philosophy of justice?
I feel like this project has a lot to do with my personal philosophy of justice. My philosophy revolves around Justice being what you make of it, a complete social construct that has humankind ever more reaching for it. My project revolves heavily around that, how I feel it is an injustice nothing has been done already. It is an injustice to ourselves, to our town, and to our area. So I figured it is about time someone does something about it. I believe it is just a way to have written a letter to the editor, as I have every problem figured out about planting trees in the 416 fire burn area, except for the problem that I need more hands on deck. I looked into my online resources about "How to write a letter to the editor" and what I found is that it is mostly used over time and in a way to reach as many people as possible. I feel it brings about more justice that more than just me even knows that we need to do something about this, thus it is more justice for all that I do this. As far as my message, I wanted it to be personal and utilize my reasoning. I want to make the connection that it is our backyard and that we need to fix this. It is more in line than any other ideas out there as this is just a letter. Being too technical was the only other feasible option, and that really turns people away. Which goes against my idea of bringing people together.
Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull off your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? Explain!
I feel that I was almost entirely unsuccessful in my original idea of actually planting the trees, but in some aspects I think this is better. The original idea had only 8 kids wanting to really plant trees, but with this letter I may have lost 8, but I gained 1,000. More than ever I feel like I'm actually shaping public opinion on this issue and getting people hyped for it rather than just doing the manual labor. In the end, I feel like the creation of making it bigger was the real success as well as the biggest loss, or really the only loss.
Justice Project Reflection
In what ways were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your project proposal? What contributed to your successes?
I was successful in getting all the research done in the categories I was looking at. These are, but not limited to, the financing of the project, the timing of it as well as establishing who would help as either someone to plant trees with or what have you. The original idea was to execute this plan but as that did not come to fruition I figured the best that could be done is a change in project goal, where I was not planning on actually planting the trees but just create the most detailed plan with just enough wiggle room for anything that may come up. And in that regard, it went well. Many things contributed to the success of this project, from the more mundane to bigger things. One of the bigger things was just the timing, as the ground was freezing as I wrote down much of the plan I made, so all that was feasibly left to do was to plan for when it thaws, as I did.
In what way were you unsuccessful in meeting the goals you established in your proposal? What contributed to your failures? What did you do to try to overcome the obstacles? What should you have done differently?
I was unsuccessful in not too many things, but they were pretty major. I feel I could have done a better job at delegating my time to things that were important versus things that were fun. I found myself driving much too deep than needed in the scientific aspects of the project, like how trees grow and how certain ones react to different environments. Standard ADHD thought processes, or lack thereof. This leads to certain things being completely useless to me while also being the most heavily invested upon. So, certain uninteresting things like the taxes of planting exotic trees in certain areas were almost completely left out. Other things that contributed to my failures are small but many. I had been going through a tougher time than usual mental health wise and with a couple of family “difficulties” things went a lot slower academically for me. But it's safe to say that the obstacles were overcome, mostly due to some better-than-usual time management skills on my end as well as a lot of free time. And if I’m being honest I the number one thing I could have or should have done differently was start the better-than-usual time management much earlier than I had, I feel like the project would have gone many times farther than it had.
To what extent did you SHOW UP for this project? How engaged/committed/involved were you in the work? How much did you strive to create beautiful work worth doing? To what extent were you accountable to yourself and others if relevant?
As far as Showing up to my project, I feel like I did the very best I could with what I had , which was an unfocused, uncommitted group. More worried about their personal problems with the project than my litteral solutions to said problems. I worked my a** off for this to get off the ground and in the end it sort of fell apart but I do not blame them. In part I blame myself, I could have worded certain things better of course. I researched almost all the time, I was calling people to make my plan as fleshed out as possible. From calling a CSU extension office so that I know I can plant their trees where I want them, to calling BLM Colorado to see about getting a permit for planting the actual trees. It was just a flawed project from the start, and I've come to reconcile and live with that, but also grow :) . I think this is beautiful work, others may disagree and think no time went into just writing a letter but no, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I behold this project as my own and I know the blood, the sweat and the tears that went into it as my own. So yes, it is beautiful work.
What TWO key lessons did you learn from this project that you can apply to your senior project? Think about how a senior project involves choosing a project you’re passionate about that is viable in the time provided, completing multiple steps over the course of a semester, potentially collaborating with other organizations or people, fundraising, spreading the word, and so much more! The Justice Project was like practice for the big game, rehearsal for the broadway show, an appetizer to the 5-course meal!
Not to be too unoriginal, but time management really is key. But to build on that I would say that “the delegation of myself and my time” was key. It is very important to set aside time to do the things you need to do but maybe not the things you want of course, but even more important is to delegate the certain times to certain tasks. It is a lot like putting yourself in the best mindset for the thing you are doing right now, and not what comes later or what came before. A piece of knowledge I think really applies here is something my grandfather would always say, “Half of every project you do is always going to be finding the right tool for the job” and I think this perfectly applies to my senior project. As I get back on the grind that is reading academic texts, I need to remind myself that I need the best tool for the job, and to delegate myself properly. This, coupled with finding the time in the first place is definitely the way to go forward with my senior project.
Secondly, a proper note taking strategy is key for me to get my senior project done well and on time. As it is, I find note taking to be second only to legitimate torture, and could often find myself absolutly unwilling to do it. But I did indeed find a note taking strategy that works for me in this case, it’s a little hard to follow but bear with me.
Instead of reading something, finding it interesting and noteworthy, then taking the time to mark down a note, I will just cut out the middle man. So I would instead, read something interesting, and just leave a mark and, at the end of the text, come back and read again and write down my thoughts.
I was successful in getting all the research done in the categories I was looking at. These are, but not limited to, the financing of the project, the timing of it as well as establishing who would help as either someone to plant trees with or what have you. The original idea was to execute this plan but as that did not come to fruition I figured the best that could be done is a change in project goal, where I was not planning on actually planting the trees but just create the most detailed plan with just enough wiggle room for anything that may come up. And in that regard, it went well. Many things contributed to the success of this project, from the more mundane to bigger things. One of the bigger things was just the timing, as the ground was freezing as I wrote down much of the plan I made, so all that was feasibly left to do was to plan for when it thaws, as I did.
In what way were you unsuccessful in meeting the goals you established in your proposal? What contributed to your failures? What did you do to try to overcome the obstacles? What should you have done differently?
I was unsuccessful in not too many things, but they were pretty major. I feel I could have done a better job at delegating my time to things that were important versus things that were fun. I found myself driving much too deep than needed in the scientific aspects of the project, like how trees grow and how certain ones react to different environments. Standard ADHD thought processes, or lack thereof. This leads to certain things being completely useless to me while also being the most heavily invested upon. So, certain uninteresting things like the taxes of planting exotic trees in certain areas were almost completely left out. Other things that contributed to my failures are small but many. I had been going through a tougher time than usual mental health wise and with a couple of family “difficulties” things went a lot slower academically for me. But it's safe to say that the obstacles were overcome, mostly due to some better-than-usual time management skills on my end as well as a lot of free time. And if I’m being honest I the number one thing I could have or should have done differently was start the better-than-usual time management much earlier than I had, I feel like the project would have gone many times farther than it had.
To what extent did you SHOW UP for this project? How engaged/committed/involved were you in the work? How much did you strive to create beautiful work worth doing? To what extent were you accountable to yourself and others if relevant?
As far as Showing up to my project, I feel like I did the very best I could with what I had , which was an unfocused, uncommitted group. More worried about their personal problems with the project than my litteral solutions to said problems. I worked my a** off for this to get off the ground and in the end it sort of fell apart but I do not blame them. In part I blame myself, I could have worded certain things better of course. I researched almost all the time, I was calling people to make my plan as fleshed out as possible. From calling a CSU extension office so that I know I can plant their trees where I want them, to calling BLM Colorado to see about getting a permit for planting the actual trees. It was just a flawed project from the start, and I've come to reconcile and live with that, but also grow :) . I think this is beautiful work, others may disagree and think no time went into just writing a letter but no, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I behold this project as my own and I know the blood, the sweat and the tears that went into it as my own. So yes, it is beautiful work.
What TWO key lessons did you learn from this project that you can apply to your senior project? Think about how a senior project involves choosing a project you’re passionate about that is viable in the time provided, completing multiple steps over the course of a semester, potentially collaborating with other organizations or people, fundraising, spreading the word, and so much more! The Justice Project was like practice for the big game, rehearsal for the broadway show, an appetizer to the 5-course meal!
Not to be too unoriginal, but time management really is key. But to build on that I would say that “the delegation of myself and my time” was key. It is very important to set aside time to do the things you need to do but maybe not the things you want of course, but even more important is to delegate the certain times to certain tasks. It is a lot like putting yourself in the best mindset for the thing you are doing right now, and not what comes later or what came before. A piece of knowledge I think really applies here is something my grandfather would always say, “Half of every project you do is always going to be finding the right tool for the job” and I think this perfectly applies to my senior project. As I get back on the grind that is reading academic texts, I need to remind myself that I need the best tool for the job, and to delegate myself properly. This, coupled with finding the time in the first place is definitely the way to go forward with my senior project.
Secondly, a proper note taking strategy is key for me to get my senior project done well and on time. As it is, I find note taking to be second only to legitimate torture, and could often find myself absolutly unwilling to do it. But I did indeed find a note taking strategy that works for me in this case, it’s a little hard to follow but bear with me.
Instead of reading something, finding it interesting and noteworthy, then taking the time to mark down a note, I will just cut out the middle man. So I would instead, read something interesting, and just leave a mark and, at the end of the text, come back and read again and write down my thoughts.