essay

Did Moms 4 Housing have the right to occupy 2928 Magnolia Street? Why or why not?To arrive at your position, you should continue to explore the following ideas from our discussion forums:

  • your philosophy on the balance between human rights and property rights
  • your interpretation of the history of racist housing policy in the United States
  • your beliefs about community activism

Ultimately, your essay will synthesize the facts, examples, and perspectives from the texts in this unit to support your thesis. You will strengthen your credibility (appeal to ethos!) by including at least one counterargument. 

  • An introduction that describes the general situation and narrows down to the specific issue.
  • A thesis statement that conveys your main argument in response to the prompt.
  • PIE-style paragraphs that support your thesis.
  • At least one counterargument paragraph.
  • Clear writing that displays the sentence focus and sentence boundary conventions of standard English grammar.
  • MLA format (including Times New Roman 12 pt font), MLA in-text citations, and an MLA-style Works Cited page.
  • At least 5 FULL pages of writing.

will use Moskowitz, How to Kill a City, as a source. Then, you will choose from the texts (listed below) that we read/ watched for this unit. See rubric for number of texts that you should incorporate into your essay to synthesize with Moskowitz: 

  1. KCET,
  2. Rothstein,
  3. Coates, “”
  4. Website
  5. Kendall, Oakland: or .
  6. KQED Podcast:
  7. Hahn, “”
  8. Ferrari, “”
  9. Grabar, “”
  10. ABC 7 News “”
  11. KQED Forum, “”