These past two weeks we have been viewing and discussing various public service announcements (PSAs). The common theme in all of these PSAs is a call to action. These call to actions are meant to inspire their audience to get up and do something about an issues. This can range from stopping littering or something pertaining to social justice. My group #blacklivesmatter relates to the latter. They have many call to actions on social media on a consistent basis. One such example was SocialJusticeAmerica’s tweet that said we must end white supremacy and white privilege. Their tweet came in response to a video of the same cop who shot an unarmed teenager, tazing a cooperative suspect. Both of these incidents involved a POC and the same cop. Although SocialJusticeAmerica’s PSA may not come in the form of a video, they still have a call to action with the hopes that change can be made. This post gave the audience another reason to continue pressing the #blacklivesmatter agenda. Another perfect example of a PSA on social media is Jenny Lundt’s Facebook post. This post featured a picture of her proudly wielding a sword. She then told a personal anecdote of how not one person questioned her when she had the sword in public. In contrast, her entire campus was shut down because people thought a black was carrying a gun when it was actually a glue gun. Her call to action is for white Colgate students, or white students in general, to do better in terms of their perspectives on African-Americans. This post went viral and has hopefully inspired white students in America to think about their perspectives on African-Americans differently. These two previous PSA were simple yet effective. They had a call to action and allowed the audience to understand their perspective with the hopes that progress will be made.

This week we began our video project. The purpose of this project is to make a public service announcement (PSA) that gives our audience a call of action for some specific event. Since the repeal of Obamacare many people have made their own calls to action via twitter for people to take action against the political machine. One such call to action was to vote all of the politicians out of office who voted to repeal Obamacare. This call to action relates to what we have been learning because a picture of all of the representatives who voted to repeal Obamacare was tweeted, so people could know who to vote against next election. This PSAs of sorts give people a simple mission to right what has been done wrong by these lawmakers. Considering my group is #blacklivesmatter, the recent appeal of Obamacare affects African-Americans more than other groups because they have depended on Obamacare these past couple of years since the law was passed. Another call to action was made by Shaun King. King delivered a very simple tweet: he asked everyone to know the name Jordan Edwards. Edwards is the youngest kid this year to be killed by police this year at age 15. He was killed while driving away from a police officer after leaving a party. With this PSA, King wants people to know that police are still gunning down African-American youth. This is important because #blacklivesmatter essentially began after the police shootings of several unarmed black men. King’s calls to action is for his supporters to bring attention to this murder. These PSA may not come in the same format as the smokey the bear campaigns but they still have the same premise. They want people, specifically #blacklivesmatter supporters, to respond to their call of action with the hopes that change is made soon.