Friday, April 8, 2016

Production Report 2

In this blog I will talk about the ongoing production of my essay project. I will address how the production is going as well as what I intended to get from this section of the essay. I will focus on the main opposition argument in this section.

This section is a traditional essay format and doesn't deviate from that format. This section is only one paragraph, but it is a pivotal paragraph for my essay. This section sets up the background for why the solution is the best possible set-up. An essay must first present background in order to present an effective argument. In this case I used that convention to make this entire section. The genre conventions of an essay dictated that I used proper flow and kept the section organized.

The production of this material went smoothly, I was able to find a lot more material from the O'odham tribe than I was anticipating which made this an easy paragraph to write. This week I had to write two essays, the first was one that had to be done this week so it got priority. The second was this one. Nevertheless this meant that this section was written very late at night after I had already written another long essay, so the production went slow and the thoughts behind it may be sporadic.

Here is my Opposition Background Section:
"There is much opposition to the freeway and in order to understand the best way to compromise, the issues the opposition raises must be addressed. Phoenix is a city which can be considered a “melting-pot” of cultures and peoples. Each project that is built in a city must be built with respect to each of those cultures and people groups. The South Mountain Freeway would traverse the Ahwatukee Region of Phoenix, a neighborhood between the proposed freeway path and the actual South Mountain. The freeway would also go next to the Gila River Indian Nation along with several neighborhoods in southwest Phoenix, the towns of Avondale and Tolleson. Nevertheless thousands of people will be within direct proximity of the freeway and likely have some sort of vested interests in the region. Along with the direct impacts of the freeway, there are also several concerns that have been raised by environmental groups about the freeway. The L202 Freeway is just part of a larger environmental argument that states that the world needs to stop building new freeways completely in order to combat climate change. The idea is that any new freeways will promote the use of fossil fuels and continued climate change. Another environmental argument is that the freeway will interrupt natural habitats that thus far have been left fairly natural and wild. There are several animal species that call South Mountain home and also live in the land inhabited by the Gila River Tribe. Construction and the new open access to the South Mountain area could completely altar the habitats of these animals. The Gila River Tribe also began their argument with that same sentiment, to them they are responsible to take care of the land and creatures around them. The tribe also has cultural roots and connections to the mountain. They believe that the mountain was the place where their people were created, the mountain is their origin story; for these O’odham people, the mountain is more than just a mountain, it’s a reminder of where they came from and who they are. The freeway would traverse the area between their lands and the mountain that they revere. This freeway would be a literal blockade that would cut them off from freely walking up to the mountain. The tribe was so strongly opposed to the idea of the freeway that they would not let the freeway be built across their lands, thus for the freeway to work it had to be completely run through the city of Phoenix. This means unfortunately that the freeway would have to be built through part of the end of the mountain, which means extensive blasting and destruction of part of the mountain so that the freeway could be put through. This is even more upsetting to the tribe and to environmentalists and even to a lot of local residents. For them the necessity to destroy a sacred natural habitat is a deal breaker and is the ultimate unforgivable sin of this freeway."

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