Alberto Garcia-Figueroa

Prof. M. Marca

Eng. 113B

19 April 2012

Preface: Project Web

 
    A little over fifty years ago a small community of Hispanics, were forced from their homes because according to the government it was in the public’s best interest. The community was located in the heart of Los Angeles, a hill named Chavez Ravine. They were evicted and removed from their homes in order to make room for a baseball complex known as Dodger Stadium. This was the cause of eminent domain. Eminent domain means taking privately owned and using it for public use because it is in the public’s best interest. This event was a tragic act in Los Angeles history. My group and I made a website that informs and makes a visual of what happened to those many families that lost their small piece of Los Angeles. The people of Los Angeles, the fans of the beloved Dodgers, and the descendants of the Chavez Ravine residents will benefit from the website my group and I have put together in order to inform the people of greater Los Angeles. Our website uses the appeals of the rhetorical devices of logos, pathos, and ethos. This gives the people the facts, appeals to their emotions, and shows the credibility we have and that our links display.

    When you first open the website you can see in the creative title which I thought fit the website very well. You can also see an emotional video of descendants of Chavez Ravine talking about what they remember and felt about what happened. In the first page we have an immediate call to action about what we want to accomplish with the creation of this website. We chose to put the video right in the middle so people can see visuals first and be drawn into the issue. We also put in an easy to use overhead links tab, that leave the audience one click away from information.

    In our website entitled “Stealing Home”, we illustrate pathos through our visuals and background colors. The pictures we used were actual photograph of events that took place back then. All the pictures are in black and white, because it really brings out how serious and emotional the event was. The complete web page is black in order to show that it is a serious and informative web page. However I think the biggest illustration of pathos would be in our blog spot. On this page we each have written down our thoughts and beliefs of eminent domain on Chavez Ravine. I believe we can capture emotion in the citizens of Los Angeles through showing our emotion in the blogs and our visuals of what happened.

    Logos in our essay is the most essential part in getting our point across. It consists of facts about what actually happened. We have prepared a history page that lets the audience know all the important details in which the act of eminent domain took place. We also have a couple videos that we found where actual people that lived in Chavez Ravine talk about what they had and what they went through in order to construct Dodger Stadium. All these facts make our website interesting and will inform the Dodger fans and the citizens of Los Angeles. We wanted to include as many facts as possible so we can inform people. We want to maintain a website that gives off a serious and informative vibe.

    The credibility or ethos that we have in our web page is based on the sources we have linked from reporters and others authors that have written about Chavez Ravine. At the top of the first page we have a tab for all the links that we thought were best to get our point across. Furthermore, we have added a contact us page in order to allow people to reach us in case they have question which I think is convenient and helpful. We also as authors of the webpage we display our credibility as students of California State University of Northridge. At the end I think the web page itself can create its own credibility for others to use as a useful source.

    Our website has come together to inform our audience about what happened more than fifty years ago in Chavez Ravine. Through the use of rhetorical devices I feel we have sold our point to the descendants of the Chavez Ravine and the citizens of Los Angeles. It can open the eyes of Dodger fans to what the real cost was to bring the Dodgers to L.A. This cost was too big a price to pay.
http://stealinghome113b.blogspot.com/

Blog Post #2: Project Web

Alberto Garcia-Figueroa

Prof. M. Marca

Eng. 113B

23 April 2012

            We had a pretty big setback besides scrapping the whole direction of the web page. One of group mates had an emergency to tend to and could not get in contact with her for a couple of hours. At that point I was certain that we were not going to be able to finish the project. However, Cristina would then call us, and explain what happened and let us know that she was still up to date with everything that we had to finish before presenting which was a huge relief. Looking for the pictures and videos that best suited the website in terms of the message that we wanted to portray took a while. I had to look around at many different options before I came to my ultimate decision. Once we finished the webpage, we were not satisfied with what it looked like completely. So then, we began to tweek it and sort of smooth it out until we got what we wanted. Finally, we got it completely done and we were all satisfied with the end result was. I was personally very satisfied with it, because it looks like a website that I would actually site and visit for information. Everything from the information to the background color of the website was better than I could have imagined. I especially liked how Cristina was able to put a comment bow that can actually post comments straight to the web page, which quite difficult to do. I can say with confidence that we did well on this project especially with all the problems that we ran into.

 

Blog Post #1: Project Web

            Getting started on a website in order to inform the people of Los Angeles, the Dodger fans, and descendants of Chavez Ravine about what truly happened is going to be a challenge. Once me and my group got together and chose the topic that we were going to focus on there was already controversy about which way to go with it. We were disagreeing on so many levels that I thought we were never going to reach a compromise. Though we began simply on how we wanted the front page to look. We wanted to go with dark colors in order to portray the seriousness of the event we are informing the citizens of Los Angeles of. We also, decided to meet two days in order to first get the project started roughly and the second day to wrap it up with our finishing touches. In our first meeting we headed over to one of my colleagues house in order to get started. We got together and thought of reenacting the pictures, but we then decided to scrap the whole idea, because we believed that it was better to stick to hard information and appealing to emotion. Though about halfway through the project we decided to go a different way and we dropped some of our crucial and big parts of our website. At this time I thought we never going to be able to get it done. Hopefully we can figure out a way that we can all agree on completely and actually get started on the website. All the information and visuals that we have to find should have meaning and purpose and we intend to find the best of all. It is going to be a challenge now that we change our whole direction of the website project.