2016
Project description
November 2016, was the time when people in California who are eligible to vote were faced with 17 propositions to vote on. In Dr. Ps humanities class we created podcasts to help them be confident in their decisions, change their views on certain propositions, and possible even learn some thing new about any thing we included in our podcasts.
Project process
(Before we were able to actually create the podcasts we obviously had to know what we were talking about. First we were educated about what propositions are and how they are voted on through comics, which I think was really helpful and made us relate a little more to the topic since we are not yet eligible to vote. As a class we all researched proposition 64 (making recreational marijuana legal) and prepared for a Socratic seminar during class. We read the voters guide and a few other articles to help us create questions to ask the group. I think this format really allowed us to share/form our opinions but still know what our peers think and it helped us see the prop from another perspective. Later on we were split of into pairs (and one group of three) and assigned a proposition to make a presentation on and present it to the class. My group was assigned prop 59 which is the one were "political spending" is a form of protected speech under the first amendment. After everyone presented their propositions we all voted on which ones we thought were going to be the most interesting and the ones that people should be educated on before they vote. We ended up deciding on 62/66 (getting rid of the death penalty/speeding it up) 63 (requiring a permit for purchasing ammunition) 64 (legalization of recreational marijuana) and 57 (parole for "non-violent" criminals)
After we decided which ones we wanted to work on as a class we all got assigned to a prop and a group of for so we could start working on our podcasts.My group was assigned to prop 63, which is the one about gun control and background checks for ammunition. We started off by just researching the prop more in depth and brainstorming what we wanted our podcast to sound like. Shortly after, the entire lucky professionals team went on a field trip to balboa park were we interviewed the general public about the propositions. My group ended up getting a very unexpected interview that really ended up helping us find the path we wanted our podcast to follow. Her name was Darlene, and she shared a really strong story about how long ago she stabbed her husband, and if she had access to a gun in those days she probably would have shot him instead. We asked her if she had ever had an instance where a gun had helped her out and she shared that she was at a party, and was about to be raped but then, some guy came in and scared the other guy off with the gun. Darlene then told us that she believes guns are good in general (protection, recreational, hunting) but that it should be restricted on what kind of person has access to fire arms.
Our interviews from Balboa Park
After deciding on what we wanted to focus on in the podcast we thought about what possible interviews we could have with professionals. We reached out to 15-17 people and only 3 replied back. Kerry Shaw from the trace, Sam Parades from Gun Owners of California, and Margot Bennett from Women Against Gun Violence. We got a lot of great information from all three interviewees, however we ran into some technical difficulties with Sam and Kerry's interviews. We were able to re-do and save Sams interview but Kerry's was unusable but we would still like to thank her for being so patient with us throughout it all. I am so proud of my group because we all worked together to come out with such a great podcast even though we did have a few roadblocks in the way. We all learned new skills in interviewing, editing, and recording. I also stepped out of my comfort zone a lot and conducted one of the interviews.