Practice paraphrasing by choosing one of the following passages and applying the method described in Eric Drown’s handout, “How to Paraphrase”
In this moment [May 2020], the primary tension in America is how, and when, life is going to “return to normal.” But that “normal” was an economy that, even before COVID-19, was built on a form of consumption that felt compulsory, with household debt as normalized as the exploitative work conditions that make those daily consumption habits possible. A “normal” in which the vast majority of people still felt economically precarious, burned out, and swallowed by their student debt, and most still struggle to cobble together enough savings to protect them from medical or financial catastrophe. A “normal” in which the various manifestations of the gig economy – and the lack of healthcare, labor protections, or the general safety net that accompanies them – have been, well, normalized. Anne Helen Petersen, “I Don’t Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore”
Scholars of policing have often thought that police officers were obligated to be extremely cautious when determining which level of force to use on a civilian. It was this cautiousness, in fact, that was said to distinguish a police officer from a soldier at war. The rationale was that in war time, one’s consciousness could be a liability. This is why, when encountering the enemy, soldiers needed to start at the highest level of force and work their way down the continuum. Police officers, however, were supposed to start at the lowest level of the continuum and then work their way up. But most of the Chicagoans I spoke with thought that this distinction no longer exists. Police officers ascend this continuum in the blink of an eye. Laurence Ralph, “An Open Letter to All the Future Mayors of Chicago”
