Rights

This week I found a very interesting reading from Frederick Douglas. It caugh my attention from beggining to end. It says "All men desire liberty. They desire to possess this inalienable birthright themselves, if they are not concerned about others being the recipients of its countless blessings. They instictively shrink from the idea of having their intellectual, their Moral, and their Physical organism, subjugated to the entire control of Tyranny, clothed in the vesture of assumed superiority. This love of their own identity is inseparably connected with their desire and hope of immorality. And even those who attack the citadel of man's personality, and seek to reduce him to a thing, are jealous of any invasion of their own Rights, and will resist to the death any encroachment upon the sacred domain of their own personal liberty. They are Abolitionists, as they seek to abolish the system of Oppression which has them for victims, even though they trample their own principles in the dust, when the Rights of other are invaded. This is neither just nor generous." (P. 239)

This quote which is very long caugh my attention from beggining to end. First, it says a reality "All men desire liberty". We all want to be free, even at this time when we are seem to be free there is always something that we want to be freed of. Although the freedom that Douglas was referring to another type of freedom he also refers to the freedom of the mind and the body from whatever makes it a slave. Second, this quote has multiple words which are marked with a beggining capital letter which I am not sure if is part of the grammatical use or a choice of the writer. Moral, Rights, Physical, Abolitionists, Oppression, Tyranny all show the main idea of what this quote is about. Moral, because the actions of the slave holders were not considered right. Rights, because is what Douglas was fighting for. Tyranny, because slaves suffer under the tyranny of the slaveholders. Abolitionist, because they were looking for a change. If these capitalized words were use with a purpose I guess still hundreds of years after we read them and find some kind of meaning. The main reason why I chose this passage is because it made me think about how much still this days we fight for some kind of freedom.

For Susan B Anthony I chose the following quote, "Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all madr by men, interpreted by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor's ordered veredict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of "that citizen's right to vote," simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man." In this quote Susan B Anthony shows how brave she was. Also, she shows her determination to make of herself an example. She was clearly trying to show evidence of how being a women can get you in troubles that men do not get. I would have chosen any quote from her simply because I admire her work, but I chose this because of my own unability to vote. I am a legal resident. In fact I have been for the last six and a half years. For this mayoral elections I wished from the bottom of my heart that I could vote. I feel that after five years paying taxes in NY city without receiving anything from the government I was entitled to do so. Unfortunately, voting is just for citizens. If you do not have the amount of money to do your citizenship paperwork and you do not qualify for a waiver than you cannot vote. I felt like my right was taken away from being poor. After a certain number of years in a State we should be at least be able to vote for a major.