Blog Post #6 Imitation

Imitation Common Place Blog #6

“The union’s survival, its very existence, sent out a signal to all Hispanics that we were fighting for our dignity, that we were challenging and overcoming injustice, that we were empowering the least educated among us, the poorest among us. The message was clear. If it could happen in the fields, it could happen anywhere: in the cities, in the courts, in the city councils, in the state legislatures.”
– Cesar Chavez, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, November 9 1984
Website: http://www.chavezfoundation.org/_cms.php?mode=view&b_code=001008000000000&b_no=16&page=1&field=&key=&n=7

For this imitations I wanted to look for a speech or poem that had more than one rhetorical device. It has come to my attention, their can be more than one Rhetorical Device in a sentence to help the author make connections and grasp the point to the readers as well. I found the speech of the most famous Hispanic farm labor worker activist Cesar Chavez. In his speech in the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco he used, two types of schemes asyndeton, and anaphora. Asyndeton is used to add connection to a phrase or a sentence using, and, but or just commas between words to create a dramatic effect to the meaning. Chavez, uses asyndeton “the least educated among us, the poorest among us”, which is connecting the least and the poorest as importance and list of connection amongst the two phrases making it artful. He also uses anaphora, which is the repetition of a word or words in the beginning of the sentence; “in the cities, in the courts, in the city councils, in the state legislatures, to create an importance of all these judicial structures, which all have some sort of power. By using these two rhetorical devices he is able to get his point across to his audience of the mistreatment of the hispanic farm workers in California and the connection of mistreatment in any type of society even in high power such as legislatures.

My imitation

The Dream act has given hope to all the young adults who came involuntary and stayed. They have made the United States their home, their salvation of a better life, their opportunity to further educate themselves, their one and only country they have known. Still injustice, mistreatment, and inequality still arises till this day. The dreamers have the dream to go to college, become, doctors, lawyers, nursers, professors, therapist, to help educate others like themselves continue to dream and fight for the right of an education. The dreams want to help this country not destroy it. The stand for the right of Hispanics has begun, it happened in the past, it happens in the present, it will continue to happen in the future.

For my imitation I wanted to connect Cesar Chavez issues he addressed in 1984 and connect it to todays time with the Dreamers. I decided to talk about the mistreatment and injustice of the dreamers who were raised in this country and are being given the opportunity to attend college and further their education. I do not put myself in the same category because I am a US citizen but I do believe and consider myself a dreamer because I am hispanic, was not born here and the United States is the only place I call home. I have always wanted to go to college and continue my higher education and I am blessed to have the opportunity. But it breaks my heart that other students who want to go to school want to be someone in life, cannot because of their immigration status. In this imitation I added a connection to Chavez’s speech of hispanic workers taking a stand, well I connected it to 21st century, of hispanic students “the Dreamers” are taking a stand to college. In the 20 century they took a stand for better work conditions in the farm labor and now hispanic are taking a stand to continue their higher education. I used asyndeton to connect words in a list to make an artful effect of the importance of the phrase I am using. I also used anaphora to repeat the same word “their” to show I am addressing to more than one persons feeling and way of thinking when they are a dreamer. This was an interesting and fun way to use rhetorical devices in speeches to help express oneself opinion to a large crowd.