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Coverage of activism in university newspaper

zoefriese
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I published this news article about a hunger strike against Formosa Plastics that occurred in Texas this fall. Despite the extremity of a 30-day hunger strike, the protesting tactic has not gained attention from national media outlets. At the time I published this article, two small environmental organizations had announced the beginning of the strike, but none continued to cover the event in the unfolding weeks. While activists are driven to take on dangerous protest tactics, little communication of these tactics has carried across mass media.

The article itself introduces Formosa Plastics through its reputation as a "serial offender" of environmental and workplace safety regulations. I list several statistics on legal fines that Formosa Plastics has accumulated overtime, using these quantities to demonstrate the scale of their harm to environmental and human health. An important limitation of this storytelling strategy, however, is that many of Formosa Plastics' actions go undocumented, and even when documented, do not lead to legal consequences. Furthermore, we should still strive to acknowledge the harms committed by Formosa Plastics that are technically within legal limits.

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ciera.williams
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The article explains how a team of medical staff treated (and consequently killed) a number of patients following the flooding of a hospital in New Orleans. The staff in question overdosed the patients to put them out of their pain as they saved other patients who were more likely to survive. The article calls into question the process of triage and how we go about it. Who has the authority to make these decisions, and what lines do we draw between ethics and compassion. The article provides a play-by-play of the events leading up to the flooding, and relevant policies that existed and have been created related to this incident. 

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a_chen
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From the links provided within the article, relevant information about Hurricane Katrina can be viewed with the commentary and archival articles that published in The New York Times that written by other authors.

Also the author has made in contact with Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans to focus on the investigation into the detail situations happened with the floodwaters. Afterwards, gained more information on the lethal injection issues.

[http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricane-katrina?inline=nyt-class…]

[http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricanes-and-tropical-storms-hur…]

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a_chen
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The article has first emphasis the number of death and corpses during and after the Hurricane Katrina, then with further investigation and research, the issue related to the lethal injection to the patient has raised. From the physician’s perspective, the lethal injection in this case is a way to relief the patient’s pain, as it is a “for” for the lethal injection, which not seems to be violating the medical ethical. From the conclusion parts of the article, the author provided the evidence that “that more medical professionals were involved in the decision to inject patients — and far more patients were injected — than was previously understood.”     

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jaostrander
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"Anna Pou, defended herself on national television, saying her role was to “help” patients “through their pain,” a position she maintains today"

"The laws also encourage prosecutors to await the findings of a medical panel before deciding whether to prosecute medical professionals. Pou has also been advising state and national medical organizations on disaster preparedness and legal reform; she has lectured on medicine and ethics at national conferences and addressed military medical trainees"