March 8th Readings- Alexia Bacon

The Khalili and Feldman readings this week centered around imperialism in relation to the United States.  The Feldman reading discusses the power the United States has on other nations military formation and governance.  The Khalili reading centers around the “War on Terror” and how through this the United States is leading a “War on people”. 

In the Feldman chapters for this week the author discusses Israel and Palestine in relation to United States Power and U.S. imperialism.   The readings center around the intentionality of Israel modeling its military after the ideals and strategies of the United State military, this was done in order for Israel to not only have the United States as an ally, but to also be both a powerful and dominant nation state.   

In the Khalili chapters the authors describes how the United States military practices in war strengthens prison systems and the policing of people.  The reading discusses how through the movement to bring fairness to legal systems and the regulation of war has led to prison systems becoming stronger and the rise of different types of confinement. 

When thinking about the topics discussed in this weeks reading in relation to my work with young people it is difficult to provide correlations to the methodologies in these readings.  Perhaps it is stretch, but one thing that comes to mind is a relationship with the “Save” tactics that were used in the “War on Terror”.  Education practices that are used in public schools are incredibly western in their thinking.  CPS schools are made up of diverse groups of young people. The curriculum being taught is often culturally irrelevant and insensitive.  Student’s personal non-western narratives are often discounted for the “good” of the student’s education.  Perhaps thinking about education through the lens of the reading would lead to ideas that would combat these notions in our schools. 

Discussion Question

Like others in class have posted in their blogs I would be interested to talk about how these tactics are used being used under the Trump administration and in today’s political climate.