Thought 28: Revolutions on Trial 🐖🇺🇸

I was brought to court, but for a completely different reason than I was expecting. 

This project explores revolutions and the legal system. We started this project with a Nation X simulation. I have no idea what Nation X is because I was not at school that week. The next thing we did was read George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm.” Animal Farm is an analogy of the Russian revolution. In the book, a group of animals revolt against their tyrannical farm owner and create a society where all animals are equal, but things quickly go wrong when one pig manipulates the other animals to make himself a dictator.   

Next, we were assigned to our revolutions. I was assigned to the American revolution with Ines, Erik, Sylas and Hannah. We were assigned to the prosecution, meaning we were arguing that the American revolution was ineffective. It was pretty hard to find evidence but we managed to put together an affidavit. Some of our evidence included a letter from an American POW, a section of the declaration of independence that says all men are given the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, despite all of these being contradicted by slavery, and a Vox article written by some guy in 2019. To prove our understanding of our revolutions, we had to make a graphic organizer of pretty much everything we learned about our revolutions, including names, dates, places and events. We also watched some clips from legal movies and TV shows, including Better Call Saul, which is an amazing show.

After several practices, it was time to present our revolutions at the winter exhibition. we went against the American defence team, who made very good arguments. I called for the direct examination of our witness, King George III (Erik). I was very surprised by the verdict because in all of our rehearsals, the votes always went one way, but in the presentation, the opposite happened. If you want to watch the mock trial and see the verdict, I have included a link to a Youtube video of our performance.