Sunny Youth Journal

The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were tremendously difficult times for African-Americans. They were not treated like white Americans simply because of their skin color. And the laws protected the bad treatment they got. Laws requiring “separate” hotels, restaurants, schools, and even drinking fountains were common in many states. Martin Luther King was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, a drive to get more equal treatment for all Americans, not just white Americans.

This speech was important in several ways:

• It brought even greater attention to the Civil Rights Movement, which had been going on for many years. King’s speech was part of the March on Washington, a gathering of more than 250,000 people in the nation’s capital. African-Americans still were not treated as equals. Marches like this one and ones earlier in Detroit and other cities called attention to this fact.
• The speech was given in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, the monument honoring President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the Southern states. By giving his speech there, King was wanting to call attention to how things were so terrible a century before (during the Civil War) and how some things hadn’t changed so very much in 100 years.
• It brought Martin Luther King and his message of non-violence to a nationwide (and worldwide) audience. The speech was carried on radio and was reprinted in newspapers and magazines all over the United States and all over the world. After this speech, the name Martin Luther King was known to many more people than before.
• It made Congress move faster in passing the Civil Rights Act. This set of laws was finally passed the next year, in 1964. Many of these laws gave African-Americans more equal treatment than they ever had before.

Martin Luther King continued to speak out for civil rights and for nonviolence. Sadly, he was killed in 1968. Remembered for its powerful imagery and its repetition of a simple and memorable phrase, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has endured as a signature moment of the civil rights struggle, and a crowning achievement of one of the movement’s most famous faces. The Library of Congress added the speech to the National Recording Registry in 2002, and the following year the National Park Service dedicated an inscribed marble slab to mark the spot where King stood that day. The memory of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and the message it contains live on.

The largest glaciers in the world are losing ice way too fast for us to replenish it. Two satellite images remind us that Earth’s ice sheets are losing so much mass that it’s becoming obvious even from space. In the maps published as part of a study, they show 16 years of ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica as seen by a NASA satellite. The images show rapid melt in both regions, far more than the ice-mass gains.

Greenland lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year, while Antarctica lost an average of 118 gigatons per year. One gigaton of ice is enough to fill 400,000 whole Olympic-sized swimming pools. All of the melting ice was about a total 0.55 inches of sea-level rise between 2003-2019. That puts Earth on the track for the worst global warming scenario. This would put hundreds of millions of people living in coastal communities at risk of losing their homes, or even their lives because of flooding.

A new research shows, while the ice shelves have thinned and melted over the last two decades, grounded ice has also became thin and melted. The new analysis shows that the response of these ice sheets to the changes in our climate reveals clues to why and how the ice sheets are melting. That is a good sign because now they partially know that problem for the melting glaciers.

MLK was one of the most memeral people on the planet. He made use of friendship and being able to even be together. If it was not for him then i would not be writing this right now. MLK gave a speech or his dreams now this one saying “I have a dream” was made from MLK. In this writing I will be writing about why dreams and especially his were super important.

MLK made many dreams from being able for “blacks” and “whites” to go to the same school, the same bus and even the same restaurant. All and every single one of his words in that speech were very important. Neither did she want those dreams to come true. He fighted for them. For us, everyone that was there with him listening to every word. The dreams aren’t just any birthday dreams. They are life changing to lots and people everywhere. From Florida to India. Very far places. 

Why are dreams so important? Well these dreams are things or wishes you really want. For example your dream pet is a dog. Dreaming for a dog is not a very big dream. MLK dreamed for many life saving dreams and life changing dreams. From being able to wish a birthday wish to changing lives

Now people all around the world are super thankful for what MLK has done. MLK was a hero to everyone. So when i say dreams are important. I mean they really are. MLK soon became super popular and everyone knew him.

So I suggest everyone around the world do one act of kindness and caring. This explains that MLK was a very nice and caring person. Saved lots of people from danger and also kept in mind the one quote “I have a dream”

Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s speech was about slavery and how he belives that one day, white and black boys and girls will become good friends and that, they will sit, walk, and do stuff together.

He also says that he believes that one day Mississipi, a state with a heart of injustice, will one day be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I think that MLK really wants his nation to be treated equally among all the kinds of people in the world. He is also concerned about how an American, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, five score years ago, which I think is proclaiming freedom for slaves. A hundred years later, the slaves still, have not been released from captivity, racism, and discrimination.

So, I think that in the future, no matter what skin colour you are, we all, should be treated equally.

Antarctica and Greenland are known for its ice, or ice shelves — but that might not be true after a few decades. Data from NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite, which launched in 2018 to monitor elevation changes on land (and ice) around the world by bathing the planet in laser beams, were used. “‘It’s like an architectural buttress that holds up a cathedral,’ study co-author Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, said in the statement. ‘The ice shelves hold the ice sheet up. If you take away the ice shelves, or even if you thin them, you’re reducing that buttressing force, so the grounded ice can flow faster.'” This means that the ice shelves — enormous ledges of ice floating over the ocean — are essential to keep the ice intact. This is bad because when more water intrudes the ocean, it can flow anywhere (as long as it follows the Coriolis effect), and flooding may occur sometime soon, annihilating the place.

Mother knows best is a universally acknowledged truth declaring that you should listen to your mother and take her advice, because she knows best. However, the people that that phrase is usually aimed at- children and teenagers- are the ones who ignore or go against it most stubbornly. Robert Cormier’s short story “The Moustache” is a perfect example of this, and why we should all listen be listening to our mothers.

In “The Moustache”, Mike is going on a trip to visit his ailing grandmother, who has problems with her memory due to illness. Mike’s mother is checking his appearance before he goes and tells him that at seventeen years old he “has no business wearing a moustache”. However, even though it’s costing him money (he looks older and so must pay the adult fee for the cinema), Mike only says that he’s thinking about shaving it off to placate his mother, ignoring her advice even when she says that “your grandmother probably won’t even recognize you”. After she says this Mike sees “a shadow fall across her face”, implying that 1. the thought of it makes his mother sad, and 2. he knows it, and by the instinct of one who has a mother he wants to fix it. But even then, his teenage drive for autonomy and independence wins out, and he does not shave the moustache.

Then, he leaves for the nursing home where his grandmother stays, and when they see each other, the grandmother mistakes Mike for her own husband, his grandfather. She then proceeds to speak, very emotionally, about her life with her husband and her regret at being unable to apologize for something, and then apologizes for it to Mike, who she still thinks is her husband.

As you may be able to imagine, being mistaken by a close relative for their passed partner, listening to them reminisce about their life together, and apologize for something they did to that partner, made Mike deeply uncomfortable and scared. When he finally gets back home, he tells his mom all the good things- that his grandmother had looked good and healthy and called him Mike, but leaves out what he really wants to say: “you and Dad really love each other, don’t you? I mean– there’s nothing to forgive between you, is there?”. This worry about his parent’s relationship stems from his grandmother’s woes about her own, and like any child who’s grown up in a happy, healthy home with both parents, his worry of how it might affect him.

In the end, Mike does shave off his moustache, but his questions about his parents’ relationship remain. Questions this big aren’t forgotten easily, and presumably it will nag at him for some time, always in the back of his brain. But if he’d shaved off his moustache like his mother said to, his grandmother would probably not have mistaken him for her husband and scared him so, and he wouldn’t have to put up with those worries about his parents’ relationhip in the back of his head. If only he’d listened to his mother, he’d probably have felt a lot better about the visit, which would have prevented the worries plaguing him now, showing that we should all be listening to our mothers because their advice is invaluable.

Imagine being locked up in a room the size of a bathroom, alone with nothing to do. The room is made up of thick cement walls with no windows, so communication is almost impossible. For 23 hours each day, there will be nothing to do, and this process continues for many days, months, and possibly years or even decades. This is solitary confinement torture. In the Ted Talk What Happens to People in Solitary Confinement spoken by Laura Rovner, the speaker informs humans on the true horrors of solitary confinement inside the ADX prison. This torture needs to be banned because it causes severe health problems, and makes people go insane.

Humans are social creatures. From the beginning of mankind until now, humans were always organized in groups, which allowed communication and socializing. Solitary confinement completely isolates one from this group, the group of humans. Social media is one of the key gadgets for communication, and it is taken away. The speaker explained how people locked in adjacent cells would attempt to talk by screaming through shower drains, and still see little to no success. Their constant screaming would slowly take away their ability to talk, which is another torture, and they will eventually become mute. Additionally, the enraged individuals even try band their own heads on the walls for entertainment, only to cause brain damage, which is obviously not helpful. All of the ways people in solitary confinement try to entertain themselves or communicate only lead to more torture and will cause insanity. Solitary confinement needs to be banned.

A ways of treatment capable of inducing insanity is not something one should agree to. It is one of the cruelest punishments to ever exist. The speaker stated that solitary confinement causes one to forget self-existence and avoid other humans. Forgetting self-existence causes people to perform “life-checks” on themselves to see if they are alive. These “life-checks” include harming oneself, and possible even trying to suicide, which adds more onto the list of health problems. Avoiding humans is an even more serious problem. As previously stated, humans are social creatures, and solitary confinement takes away the ability to socialize. Instead of being forced into not socializing, the poor individuals are now voluntarily performing the action defying the meaning of humans. Solitary confinement is completely mind-washing people and destroying brains. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is forced to isolate themselves in their own homes, and contact with other humans is dangerous. In this scenario, COVID-19 represents the prison. Thankfully, the world has provided mankind with social media, a form of reliable communication with friends and family. Medical workers during this pandemic have a different story. Many of them are forced to live away from their family and isolate themselves in case they contract COVID-19 from working with sick patients. All over social media, there are frightening videos of crying medical workers begging for COVID-19 to go away, similarly to prisoners begging to leave the prison. This pandemic has also engaged human avoidance, which is another terrible cause of social confinement. Even though the confinement of COVID-19 is nothing near that of real solitary confinement, people are still going insane, trying to do anything to entertain themselves. Solitary confinement is a serious problem and has to be stopped.

Some may say that people who commit such terrible crimes deserve to be tortured in solitary confinement, but this perspective is near-sighted. To clear up the understanding, many of these same people also agree to stop the death sentence. To start off, torture is much worse than a death sentence. The death sentence is quick and fast, but torture is slow. Would one rather die instantly without pain, or endure through months of merciless insanity? The decision is obvious. Additionally, even if the criminal survives solitary confinement, their brain will be seriously affected because a crime so terrible probably will result in decades of confinement. Instead of quickly killing without pain, humanity has decided to torture one’s brain with such an extent that makes people suicide.

In conclusion, solitary confinement, or should it be called pure cruelty, needs to be banned. Solitary confinement causes insanity and extreme health damage. By banning this torture, humanity can rid the suffering of millions of individuals, their hopeless friends, and family. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, once said “The healthy man does not torture others – generally, it is the tortured who turn into tortures.” Solitary confinement is something evil that poisons the mind.

Isolation is bad, if you send too much time in isolation you could lose eyesight and go crazy. In the video the place looked every small and that the walking area is a cage. That first the place looked really good but then when you walk in the cell zone and goodness is gone and that a place of despair replaced the happiness. All of the people are craving to talk to someone but when they can talk everyone’s vocal cords are unused and they are rusty so they can barely last a hour. In that hour they talked about the bad stops in that area.

Then we can look at the government side the people in the cells has done bad things like killing people. The people are evil and they deserve to be there and they should be grateful that they that a room even if they horrible stuff.

Then on the people in the cells side the people in there are going crazy and that the prison is for even worse people because then barely can talk and then need people to talk to. Because in the video the person said that the people in the cells were yelling out of the shower and another person befriended a wasp that flew in the room.

I think that they don’t deserve to be there because everyone should just go to prison for their life because no one wants to be there and that I watch a youtube video about it and it looked really bad.

Mike is eager to grow up. In fact, although he is only seventeen, he grows a mustache, though his mother tells him he has “no business wearing” it. The mustache makes Mike seem older, which may be why he wants to keep it. Despite his desire to seem more like an adult, however, Mike still displays several signs of childishness. But ultimately, he learns that he shouldn’t be so anxious to become an adult.

Mike, yearning to be seen as a grown up, likes his older sister’s boyfriend because he “doesn’t treat (Mike) as Annie’s kid brother.” However, Mike, at first, is immature even though he tries to maintain a grown up appearance. He procrastinates, “build(ing) a life on postponement.” Also, he agrees to see his grandmother as a sort of duty call, but also just to drive his father’s car over the speed limit, having “an ambition to see the speedometer hit seventy-five,” though he had previously promised to drive carefully.

During his visit with his grandmother, Mike realizes that he isn’t prepared to be an adult yet. When she mistakes his identity, Mike doesn’t know if he should play along or tell his grandmother that he isn’t her husband, but her grandson. Mike becomes overwhelmed, and he wants “to get of there.”

Nevertheless, the visit allows Mike to mature and shed his shell of childishness. He realizes that the people he know are real people, they are “somebody.” They “exist outside of their relationship,” and have other sides that may not have been shown. Though this revelation scares Mike at first, it also allows him to really grow up. While realizing that it’s okay to stay a child for longer, Mike also becomes more aware and matures in his understanding of himself and others.

The US condemns other countries for torturing their prisoners, such as North Korea, Iran, etc. However, America doesn’t exactly not torture prisoners. In a maximum-security prison called ADX, all of the prisoners are punished with solitary confinement. There are stuck inside a tiny room for 23 hours. This torture may not be the one you think of, such as ones with pain, but being alone for an extended amount of time can be very damaging. Do you think that preventing prisoners from seeing other people violates their rights?

Socializing with other people is an essential thing that humans need. Laura Rovner says that humans find out their identities by interacting with other people. Some prisoners literally go insane from solitary confinement, banging their heads against the walls, doing unnatural things, and other actions we wouldn’t even think of doing. Other prisoners cut themselves to be reminded that they are still part of this world, attempt suicide, and also try to interact with other people by yelling into the shower vent but it results in them losing their voice.

I believe that isolating prisoners shouldn’t be allowed. If it’s necessary, then only for a few days like how the UK has a 15-day limit. Some people think that torture can be allowed for people who are extremely bad, such as mass murderers. However, if America says that torture is unacceptable, then we shouldn’t have it at all. No matter the extent of someone’s actions, that person is still a person. Confining them is basically treating them like an animal and it would probably only lead to worse behavior.

What is your insight on solitary confinement? Should it be allowed for a short period of time, or just have it banned completely? And if these people who have done terrible things don’t get this kind of punishment, what other things can suit them?