GPHC Blog 2020-2021

  Adrian Perez  Mr. Roddy  GPHC  12 December 2020 How Race and Bicycling are connected  Race and Bicycling. Two things I felt had no connection with each other. But actually, they do have some correlation. The story I read about was of this queer black woman, who many identify as a male.  She was working on LGBTQ issues by leading a program for an organization. She says she commonly experiences anti-blackness and racism. She then learned about the executive director position at Los Angeles County Bike Coalition(LACBC). She was very hesitant about working there. She loves to bike because it provides a sense of freedom which in some cases could feel uncommon for a black woman working in a toxic workplace. Also since bike lanes are a common factor of gentrification in poorer neighborhoods. She went into the interview with the mentality of making it a social justice organization. And made it very clear if they didn’t like that, they shouldn’t hire her. They the...

 Fabrício Guerra Mr. Zhou GPHC 14 December 2020 Climate and Migration      As climate change is beginning to effect people with huge storms and devastating droughts, the opposite is being done to help the people who live in these areas. In the past couple of years, strong economic cities like Houston, Miami, and Orlando in the Gulf Coast Region have been seeing an increase in population from people in the north. Along with this population increase comes big spending in infrastructure and business subsidies. This is all normal, and if it was a normal circumstance it would be good. However, considering the climate estimations for the next 50 years show that this is not a sustainable investment. Right now in the United States there are certain Niche Zones, which are places that are perfect for human activity. The current niche zones are the forests of the southeast, and California Coast, and the Forests of Arizona. If the we continue to look after our environment, niche...

 Cross Border Water Wars  The Boquilla Dam is a dam on the Conchos river in the state of Chihuahua which flows into the Rio Grande River. It serves an important role in the transfer of water between the U.S. and Mexico. Due to climate change Mexico has been experiencing more and more droughts leading to postponements in their water delivery. This threatens a treaty written in 1944 between the U.S. and Mexico which controls the share of water between the Colorado River and Rio Grande River.  The Mexican government has proposed that they would continue trying to meet the demands of water delivery to the U.S. despite the ongoing droughts and continued water scarcity. Farmers had begun protesting because they were afraid that if their water on their land would be prioritized as an exported commodity instead of being used to support local agriculture, workers would leave and rural communities would be lost. Politicians responded by sending federal forces to occupy the dam in F...

  Blake Peterson Mr. Roddy  GPHC 9 December 2020  China and 14 Other Countries Agree to set up Worlds Largest Trading Bloc  14 countries have recently agreed to a trade bloc that is meant to help the economy recover from the impact of the coronavirus. The conclusion of RCEP negotiations supports ASEAN’s leading role in supporting the mutual trading system and the coronavirus recovery. The countries involved in the new agreement include the 10 member association of the South East Asian nations as well as China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand. The deal was signed during the annual summit of the 10 member association of southeast Asian nations. The deal represents Asia’s commitment to multination efforts towards free trade. With the new accords, the tariffs on goods between member countries will become even lower. China is especially benefiting from this deal because they now have greater influence over regional trade. Chinese officials have said that th...

Trumps Voter Turnout in 2020 Election This past election proved many of us wrong. For years now there has been this big idea that women and minorities fell on the left side of the political spectrum white men were the ones supporting Trump, however, the polling data from this election tells a very different story. Before I get into the data presented in the article and what I learned... I want to share some of my personal thoughts and opinions... about how insanely ridiculous this is. Below are some words that have come out of Donald Trump's mouth that are just not okay. On the topic of women: "Look at that face. Would anybody vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?" "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?” "If she were a man, I don't think she'd get five p...

 The article that I chose was about how Donald Trump won more votes from black and latino voters in this election than he did last election. More women voted for Trump this year than in the last election, in the last election he won the vote of white women by 9 percent but this year he won by 11 percent. The article also said “In 2016, Democrats won Hispanic and Latina women by 44 percentage points; in 2020 they won by 39.“ It also went on to say that Trump had support from 9% more black women than he had last year. AND this shift was also shown across men as well. With the Republican Party always being shown as the racist party, this was quite a surprise to me. The largest portion who shifted away from Trump were the people that are most frequently associated with being Trump supporters, white men. While this was a surprise to me it is apparently something that has been going on for years and it was expected by many that the republican party would have many white men leave its vot...

 Tensions do seem to be incredibly high between both the U.S. and China. Politically, economically, and socially there's a current strain on US-Sino relations that's only been exacerbated since Trump's been in office. While this is an issue, I'd argue that this is nowhere near the level of tension and anxiety that would constitute being called a Cold War on the same ballpark as the one we had with Russia. While we disagree and squabble with China over many issues, we still have tons of trade with them, and these economic ties motivate us to work together. Plus, the whole global power dynamic and attitudes are totally different than when there was the cold war. It was totally bipolar, and a fight between the two most powerful countries and their ideologies. China may now be a superpower, but so is Russia and the EU, and India. The conditions surrounding the tensions between China and the U.S. are so fundamentally different that it barely even compares to that of the U.S....

  John Mazziotti Mr. Zhou GPHC December 11th, 2020 Chile Embarks on Drafting New Constitution In late October, 2020, Chile began to write a new constitution. The decision to create a new constitution was fueled by the want for better education, pensions, and healthcare. The vote session to change the constitution was won by a large amount of votes in favor of changing it. This also was the largest voter turnout since voting became voluntary in 2012. This revision of the constitution changed the fundamental foundation of the previous dictatorship’s constitution which was led by Augusto Pinochet. Although the want for a new constitution is outstanding and outperformed the previous voting statistics, the process still has to be approved by a convention of elected citizens. The opposition for this constitution or what it may result in consist of those in favor of Chile’s most profitable and popular industry, copper. Essentially, the individuals who oppose this want to make sure tha...

We have all heard it a million times: Trump won in 2016 by making unique and unprecedented appeals to the racist and xenophobic tendencies of White voters, and was removed in 2020 by a coalition of women and minorities who stood up against racism and fascism. But what if that story was wrong? While there is indeed no doubt that Trump took a bigoted stance in the 2016 and 2020 elections, the idea that this was his defining electoral strength turns out to be flatly wrong. From 2016 to 2020, demographics that Trump supposedly alienates, groups that are considered core parts of the Democratic voter base, moved considerably in his favor. Black voters? Four points toward Trump. Hispanics, three. Black women moved nine points, and Central Americans swung by thirty seven. Contrary to popular belief, Biden’s victory was not the result of a rebuttal of Trumpism by minorities. In fact, the only major voting group who preferred Biden to Clinton was White men!     Statistics tell...

Izabella Curtis  Mr. Zhou GPHC 11 December 2020 Trump Voters Donald Trump: multi-millionaire, business owner, and the 45th president of the United States. Not the first time America had a president that had no political experience but one of the first obnoxious, egotistical, condescending, openly racist, sexist, and yet somehow won the hearts of so many Americans. I read an article about the voters in both elections, and let me tell you I was really surprised about the diverse group of voters Trump accumulated in the 2020 election. Historically, Trump's voters consisted of white (usually) men in the middle/higher class citizens. The article switches to talking more specifically about gender. Trump’s votes in 2016 were around nine percent margin of white women, then in the 2020 election the margin increased by four percent, I know this increase doesn't sound like a big deal but it ends up being a pretty significant number. Not only did female trump voters grow larger but Lati...

Harris County held a lot of weight in the recent presidential election as the nation’s third most populous county and a Democratic stronghold in a predominantly Republican Texas. A large percentage of Houston voters are left-leaning people of color. If that demographic’s turnout was strong throughout the state and Texas turned blue, it could have placed the Democrats at a significant advantage. Great partisan efforts were made to manipulate voter turnout. After Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman resigned earlier this year, Hollins, vice chairman of the Texas Democratic Party was appointed as an interim replacement. Under Hollins, a 23-point initiative was launched to tackle past election problems and ensure voter turnout despite COVID limitations. Houston Democrats worked to increase voting accessibility by tripling the number of early Election Day polling locations and putting in $33 million in comparison to the $4 million county election budget back in 2016. Fearing a shift, Republic...

  In the recent presidential election, female voters shifted toward Trump. He won white women by 11% which is 2% more than the previous election. While Hispanic and Latino women's votes are primarily voting democratic with 44% more than republicans in the 2016 election, that shifted by 5% towards the republican party. The Black female vote has also shifted 9% toward Trump in the 2020 election going from 90% to 81%. Trump saw an increase in male Black and Hispanic voters as well which led to a total of a 4% increase in Black American votes, a 3% increase in Hispanic and Latino voters, and a 5% increase in Asian American voters. Even though a majority of Hispanic and Latino votes went to the democratic party, there was evidence of a significant number of voters shifting to the republican party. Similar trends can be seen among Asian Americans. Japanese voters are the only Asian group that has shifted more towards the democratic party in the recent elections. Despite the fact that t...

 The Limits of Plastic Recycling  The article I read was about how the public was misled by oil companies like Exxon as well as plastic companies about the recyclability of plastic. According to the article, there are two main problems with recycling plastic: it's expensive and it's inefficient. Another problem with recycling plastic is that since plastic degrades with each use, something made out of recycled plastic can only be used once or twice. This problem has been going on for decades, and in all that time, only 10% of plastic has actually been recycled. The article says that advertisements for recycling plastic started showing up in the 1990s. These ads sent the message that every piece of plastic gets recycled when really, most of it just gets buried, burned, or dumped into the ocean. These ads were payed for by the plastic industry, which primarily consists of oil companies like Chevron, DuPont, and Exxon. Despite these ads saying that all plastic gets recycled, there...

Charlie McGill Mr. Roddy GPHC 12/9/2020 Republicans Rediscover the Dangers of Selling Bunk to Their Constituents In the Atlantic’s article Republicans Rediscover the Dangers of Selling Bunk to Their Constituents , author Rachel Shelden compares Donald Trump’s energetic, inflammatory presidential campaign with the actions of southern Democratic congressmen in the mid-19th century. During this time, southern representatives often delivered “buncombe” speeches, speeches that were designed not to convince their fellow representatives of the merits of any particular policy, but crafted to prove their pro-slavery credentials and energize their constituents back home. These speeches frequently insulted Republican politicians, and warned of the dangers of a Republican taking office to the system of slavery. They even claimed that Northerners wanted to enslave Southerners by “depriving them of their right to property!” Due to the manner of these speeches, it should therefore be no surprise th...

As young adults are coming of age, they are faced with the pressing question of where to live. This is a difficult choice to make, and in doing so you must examine the housing market and night life and find out if it's a walking friendly city. Enjoy the warm weather? Thinking of Houston, Miami, or Phoenix? Maybe think again. Many of us are focused on the surface of what it means to move to another city, but what dangers are we overlooking? As the earth warms, it is evident that our planet is changing, and this could put some of the United States most popular cities in peril due to climate change.   In the article I read for this assignment it was stated that, "C limate damage will wreak havoc on the southern third of the country, erasing more than 8% of its economic output and likely turning migration from a choice to an imperative." Even this year we have seen the dangers of our environments ; large fires in California and Australia , hurricane after hurricane hitting th...

 Andreas Cantu  Only a few decades ago, Iran had one of the most impressive green movements in the entire Middle East. With a massive national park program protecting rare species found almost nowhere else around the world, an excellent river system bringing potable water to people, and little to no air pollution; Iran was on top of the Middle Eastern green world. However, due to mass development around the country, their once green nation is beginning to fade away. This event has caused mass hysteria for Iranian environmentalism, with scientists and conservationists fleeing the country that they once loved. Certain Iranian activist groups have become more risk-averse than ever causing international partners to sever ties with them for good. However, the activist that choose to stay in Iran and continue to voice their opinion against the choices made by the government, have begun fearing for their life as Iran continues to jail, major activists.  The Iranian environmental...