1:45 - 2:45 p.m. - Contributed Paper Session 2

There is an alarming trend in the United States of citizens being arrested for videotaping police officers in public. Cell phones with video capabilities are ubiquitous and people are using their phones to document the behavior of police officers in a public place. The goal of this paper is to study the trend of citizen arrests currently in the news and recommend solutions to the problem of encroachment upon First Amendment rights through case law.

While much rhetorical research has been dedicated to social movements, not as much scholarship has examined the manifesto texts that form the rhetorical basis for said movements. This essay analyzes whether related rhetorical forms exist across multiple manifesto discourses, specifically elements of constitutive rhetoric, through the study of the UNIA and Black Panther Party’s manifestos. Although the scope of this particular inquiry is too narrow to provide a definitive conclusion, it appears constitutive elements recur enough across black liberation discourses to warrant further discussion on whether manifestos ought to be considered as a separate rhetorical genre.