1.
The protest I have chosen is a movement against
mandatory vaccination laws. In January of last year, a rallying group of
activists protested against California’s Senate Bill 277 (Moons). This specific
protest is part of a larger movement labeled the “Vaccine War” by NPR. I am
going to draw a chronological boundary around the movement to include
information from the past 6 years and perhaps a small amount of older
information regarding the history of vaccines.
2.
This protest is directly tied to the American identity
because freedom is such a vital component of what the United States stands for,
including the freedom to refuse medical care. However, despite this aspect of
the American identity, America has also developed a reputation as a country of
saviors of disease and turmoil through medical advances, as witnessed during
the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa.
This protest is compelling because it evokes two different aspects of
the American identity. Some Americans
may feel that forced vaccinations implies an encroachment of individual rights.
Others may feel that neglecting to mandate certain vaccinations violates their
rights to live in an epidemic-free environment.
3.
The specific groups I am looking at,
anti-vaccine supporters and the Nation of Islam, participated in the protest by
drawing public attention. Many female
protesters can be observed in photographs of the protest holding up signs
condemning the relatively recent Senate Bill (Moon).
4.
I am somewhat worried about the information I
will need to gather for this topic. Much of what I have seen thus far comes
from non-scholarly articles that do not have much scientific support. I want to
find scholarly articles both in favor of vaccinations and against vaccinations
to explore the backbone of this protest. I also think it will be difficult to
draw distinctive boundaries around my topic. I think I will need to do lots of
research from current articles as well as some on the origins of vaccinations
to provide myself with an understanding of how this conversation on
vaccinations may have started. I think
the most difficult part of this project will be finding information on this
specific debate in Sacramento, California. I may need to expand my research
topic to include the anti-vaccination movement as a whole instead of focusing
on this specific protest. The only problem I have found with this is that there
does not seem to be an abundant source of information from a collective
anti-vaccination group.
Works Cited:
Moon, Michelle. “Nation of Islam Joins Anti-Vaccine Bill
Protest in Sacramento.” breitbart.com.
9 June 2015. Web. 28 March 2016.
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