Moving: High School and Friends Essay

Nobody really likes to move. Atleast, I know I don’t. We were living in Brooklyn, New York. We moved into our house in Brooklyn when I was two years old. Life was going great. I had lots of good friends that I had been around my entire life. I had lived my whole life in that house, and I did not want to leave what I had always known. So here I am sitting on my front porch watching the orange, red, and yellow leaves make their way to the ground. Then I get a phone call from my dad saying were moving to Staten Island. I was in total shock, but I was feeling excited at the same time. The word spread like leaves in a storm. I didn’t want to think about moving. I just kept telling myself that it was never going to happen. I stood on my porch thinking about my best friends, starting at a new school, and packing. All the memories began to play in my head. I didn’t know if I could take this chance. It was going to be extremely hard to leave everything behind, and move to a new place. All my childhood, middle school, and ninth grade friends were going to be missed, but I knew I would eventually see them again or visit. I thought that somehow the day would never come when we would have to leave, but it came faster than I had hoped. I thought to myself that â€Å"moving is a great time to break old habits and begin new ones†. I had so much on my mind, and couldn’t wait to relax. However, I was trying my best to stay positive no matter how hard it might get because it will be all worth it. The next day we all loaded our things onto a moving van, and I quickly said goodbye to all my neighbors and friends. I found myself tearing as the van drove off. It was the next morning in my new beautiful house in Staten Island. All my furniture and belongings were brought in. As I was trying to relax my mother came up to me, and told me that she is taking me to register in a public school. That’s when my heartbeat was racing faster and faster. I was going from an all girls private school to a public school. I didn’t know how to feel at this point. The day finally came when I started sophomore year in Tottenville High School. I seen things differently, but I found myself loving this new experience. I made a few friends from each class, and did all the work I was assigned to do. After a long day in school, I came home to a delicious dish made by my mother. Everyone was anxious to know how the first day in public school was for me. I let all my friends and family know it was something different but I loved it. Now I can say I am finally relieved at this point. I realized it was one of the best things that have happened to me. I still miss my old friends, and I was scared of change. I had grown up in the same surroundings and with the same people. The only reason I didn’t want to move was because I had so many memories with such amazing people. Now that I look back on it, that change was for the best. Change can be a good thing, even if we think we hate it at the time. If we had not moved here, I would have missed out on all of the experience and opportunities that I have had, and all of the friends that I have made. No matter where life takes you, positivity is a key that will keep you going no matter how hard the situation may be. This experience only made me stronger, and taught me to be positive when it comes to who you are. However, here I stand better than ever proud of who I am, and most importantly blessed.

Political leaders Essay

Must acknowledge the excessive and racially disproportionate incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders and grapple forthrightly with ways to eliminate it. The first step is to reevaluate the current strategies for fighting drugs. Policy makers in each state, as well as in the federal government, should reassess existing public policy approaches to drug use and sales to identify more equitable but still effective options. In particular, they should examine the costs and benefits of relying heavily on penal sanctions to addressdrug use and drug trafficking and should look closely at law enforcement strategies to identify ways to make them more racially equitable. We believe each state as well as the federal government should subject current and proposed drug policies to strict scrutiny and modify those that cause significant, unwarranted racial disparities. In addition, we believe the state and federal governments should: * Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing laws that require prison sentences based on the quantity of the drug sold and the existence of a prior record. Offenders who differ in terms of conduct, danger to the community, culpability, and other ways relevant to the purposes of sentencing should not be treated identically. Judges should be able to exercise their informed judgment in crafting effective and proportionate sentences in each case. * Increase the availability and use of alternative sanctions for nonviolent drug offenders. Drug defendants convicted of nonviolent offenses should ordinarily not be given prison sentences, even if they are repeat offenders, unless they have caused or threatened specific, serious harm — for example, when drug sales are made to children — or if they have upper level roles in drug distribution organizations. * Increase the use of special drug courts in which addicted offenders are given the opportunity to complete court supervised substance abuse treatment instead of being sentenced to prison. * Increase the availability of substance abuse treatment and prevention outreach in the community as well as in jails and prisons. * Redirect law enforcement and prosecution resources to emphasize the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of importers, manufacturers, and major distributors, e. g. , drug king pins, rather than low level offenders and street level retail dealers. * Eliminate different sentencing structures for powder cocaine and crack cocaine, drugs that are pharmacologically identical but marketed in a different form. Since more blacks are prosecuted for crack cocaine offenses and thus subjected to the higher penalties for crack offenses that exist in federal and some state laws, the crack-powder sentencing differential aggravates without adequate justification the racial disparities in imprisonment for drug offenses. * Eliminate racial profiling and require police to keep and make public statistics on the reason for all stops and searches and the race of the persons targeted. * Require police to keep and make public statistics on the race of arrested drug offenders and the location of the arrests. To facilitate more inter-state criminal justice analyses, the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U. S. Department of Justice should annually compile and publish state-by-state statistics on the racial impact of the criminal justice system as it applies to drug offenders, including statistics on arrests, convictions, sentences, admissions to prison, and prison populations. II. THE EXTENT OF U. S. INCARCERATION In the year 2001, the total number of people in U. S. prisons and jails will surpass two million. 12 The state and federal prison population has quadrupled since 1980 and the rate of incarceration relative to the nation’s population has risen from 139 per 100,000 residents to 468. 13 If these incarceration rates persist, an estimated one in twenty of America’s children today will serve time in a state or federal prison during his or her lifetime. 14 There is a considerable range in prison incarceration rates among U. S. states (Table 1). Minnesota has the lowest rate, 121 prisoners per 100,000 residents, and Louisiana the highest, with a rate of 763. Seven of the ten states with the highest incarceration rates are in the South. 15 Almost every state has a prison incarceration rate that greatly exceeds those of other western democracies, in which between 35 and 145 residents per 100,000 are behind bars on an average day. 16 The District of Columbia, an entirely urban jurisdiction, has a rate of 1,600. 1 See Human Rights Watch, Cruel and Usual: Disproportionate Sentences for New York Drug Offenders (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1997). Thirty two states have mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses. Bureau of Justice Assistance, â€Å"National Assessment of Structured Sentencing† U. S. Department of Justice (February 1996). Mandatory sentences are not responsible for all excessive drug sentences. In Oklahoma, for example, a jury in 1997 gave a sentence of 93 years to Will Forster, an employed father of three with no prior criminal record who grew marijuana plants in his basement. 2 Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); David Cole, No Equal Justice (New York:The New Press, 1999); David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973). 3 See, e. g. , Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, â€Å"The Crack Attack, Politics and Media in the Crack Scare,† in Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, Crack in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) .4 Barry R. McCaffrey â€Å"Race and Drugs: Perception and Reality, New Rules for Crack Versus Powder Cocaine,† Washington Times, October 5, 1997 citing results of a survey published in 1995: Burston, Jones, and Robert-Saunders, â€Å"Drug Use and African Americans: Myth Versus Reality† in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups. 5 According to the United States Sentencing Commission, 88. 3 percent of federal crack cocaine defendants were black. United States Sentencing Commission, Special Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, 1995, Washington, D. C. , 1995, p. 156. The sentencing laws of at least ten states also treat crack cocaine offenses more harshly than powder. 6 See Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project â€Å"Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Law in the United States,† (New York: Washington, D. C. , 1998) 7 The requirement of proof of intent has been a formidable barrier for victims of discrimination in the criminal justice system seeking judicial relief. See, e. g. , â€Å"Developments in the Law: Race and the Criminal Process,† 101 Harvard Law Review 1520 (1988). 8 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Par. I, Article 1,3. In the Centre for Human Rights, Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments, Vol. , ST/HR/1/REV. 5 (New York: United Nations, 1994), p. 66. Also available at http://www. un. org/Depts/Treaty/. 9 See CERD, General Recommendation XIV(42) on article 1, paragraph 1, of the Convention, U. N. GAOR, 48th Sess. , Supp. No. 18, at 176, U. N. Doc. A/48/18(1993). See also, Theodor Meron, â€Å"The Meaning and Reach of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,† 79 The American Journal of International Law 283, 287-88 (1985). 10 Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, General Recommendation on Par. I, Article 1 of CERD. 11 See Todd R. Clear, â€Å"The Unintended Consequences of Incarceration,† (paper presented to the NIJ Workshop on Corrections Research, February 14-15, 1996). 12 Allen J. Beck, â€Å"Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1999,† Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice (April 2000). 13 Ibid. ; Kathleen Maguire and Ann L. Pastore, eds. , 1998 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice (1999), Table 6. 36. 14 Thomas P. Bonczar and Allen J. Beck, â€Å"Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison,† Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice (March 1997). 15 In each of the twenty years since 1978 for which data is available, the South has had significantly higher incarceration rates than any other region. See BJS, 1998 Sourcebook, Table 6. 37 . 16 The number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants varies worldwide from about 20 in Indonesia to about 685 in Russia. In Western Europe, the rate ranges between 35 in Cyprus and 145 in Portugal. Andre Kuhn, â€Å"Incarceration Rates Across the World,† Overcrowded Times, April 1999, p. 1. International rates of incarceration include prisoners awaiting sentences as well as all sentenced prisoners, whereas state prisons in the U. S. only confine convicted prisoners with sentences of more than one year. Therefore, the actual difference between foreign rates of incarceration and U. S. prison incarceration rates is even greater than suggested. http://www. hrw. org/reports/2000/usa/Rcedrg00-03. htm#P222_42059.

Making People to Vote

I believe there are many ways to get people to vote, but I believe the main way is through education. When people are educated on a subject, they know about it and what to do with it. A lot of people are uneducated on voting, so they don't know things, like how to register and where to vote. If we educate the public on voting and the benefits of it, more people would vote. This essay will discuss some of the possible ways of educating the public on voting. One way would be to make an educational commercial aimed towards the younger people in our society. Kind of like what Rock The Vote did, but more informational. My commercial would inform people how to register, how to find out where the voting booth is, along with all the set backs of not voting. I would talk about how you're giving up your freedom by not voting, because you're letting someone else decide who should be in charge. I would also make it very clear that everyone's vote matters! That's another big problem, each individual feels that they can't make a difference, because â€Å"they're only one vote†. I would also talk about the importance of knowing the people running in the elections and what they stand for, because if you're uneducated, you really won't make a difference. This is basically what I would talk about and it would definitely be aimed towards younger people. Another way to get people to vote would be to have a required educational program in high schools, that teaches kids every thing they need to know in order to vote. This would work very well, because it would teach younger people how and why to vote. You could also discuss candidates, how to find out about them, and what they stand for. Another way would be to educate people through fliers and brochures. This would be a lot harder and wouldn't reach as many people, but it would still educate some. A better way would be through a national magazine that talked about the importance of voting and the candidates that are currently running. This would work very well, because you would be educating people and getting them excited to vote. Overall, there are many ways to get people to vote, but I personally believe that voting comes through education. I believe the best way to increase the voting, is to increase the education of it among younger people.

The Conflict Of A Cut Above And Angel Case Study - 6

The Conflict Of A Cut Above And Angel - Case Study Example This is the â€Å"story† of the case’s progress in the courts, from the time the plaintiff filed its complaint in court, to the appeal to the court that made the final decision in the case. The procedural history of this case is the following. On July 8, 2008, Angel and Cut Above entered into a contract for the sale and purchase of a specialized crane. Pursuant to the contract Cut Above is to pay Angel $100,000.00 for the manufacture of a crane with special hydraulics that will assist Cut Above in constructing its client’s addition over the water, as the hospital is located on a Pensacola inlet, and the rehabilitation center is to be housed in the new addition. †¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨Cut Above paid Angel a deposit of $50,000.00 with the remainder to be paid to Angel upon delivery of the crane, per specifications, on January 15, 2010. January 15, 2010, came and went and the crane did not arrive. The failure of the crane to arrive set the project back initially by one week. Following a conversation with Angel’s executive Cut Above’s understanding from the executive was that the crane would not be completed until January 31, 2010, at which time it was to be shipped via truck FOB the construction site. †¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨There is a provision in Cut Above’s contract with its client, Pensacola Memorial Hospital, that the project was to be completed by March 30, 2010, and that every day the project was delayed past that time, Cut Above would be assessed $500.00 per day, said assessment is deducted from the hospital’s final payment. Cut Above was charged $3,500.00 for a 7-day delay. †¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨Based on the foregoing Cut Above rented a crane to complete as much of the project as possible until the specialized crane arrived from Angel. The crane arrived on February 4, 2010, and Cut Above accepted delivery of the crane but withheld from its final payment to Angel its cost of renting another crane, as well as anticipated delay costs on the project.