Outcome three focuses on how to craft a quality argument. The first component that we learned was the complex claim—something I really wish I had known about in high school. I was used to putting a sore-thumb of a thesis statement at the end of my awkward introduction paragraphs! Instead, a complex claim is the entire package: Claim, stakes, evidence, counterargument, and roadmap. All the components necessary to explain what you are arguing, why it’s important, and how you’re going to argue it. Once we’re into actually writing the argument, outcome three reminds us to analyze our evidence and tie it back to our main claim without falling into a polarized mindset. That is, it's important to incorporate other perspectives into the writing and refute, if necessary. Finally, outcome three highlights an old requirement: be organized.

The significance of outcome three is so broad. Being able to write an effective argument is applicable to many writing contexts, from future academic papers to good cover letters. Bonus perks include winning at internet arguments and not sounding dumb.

For outcome three, I thought my MP2 had the cleanest form of a complex claim. My main claim pops up early on in the paragraph: “At its roots, Cascadia is a continuation of the sociopolitical climate of the region as created by historical factors, while globalization played a supporting role in reinforcing Cascadia’s identity.” This is what my paper is arguing. Soon afterwards, I add a quick concession, acknowledging that “While fringe subgroups portray and polarize Cascadia as a solely secessionist movement, Cascadian bioregionalism places more emphasis on its internal togetherness and the environment than on independence from Canada and the U.S.” I elaborate further upon this point in a later paragraph with evidence. The evidence component of my complex claim paragraph has dual uses. First, it’s just evidence—CascadiaNow is establishing chapters throughout the Pacific Northwest and the Cascadia subreddit has over 9,000 subscribers. Simple enough. But this evidence also conveys the stakes—there is a social movement gaining traction and popularity. When humans flock to an idea, something about it (or the people!) must be important. Finally, my roadmap is loud and clear at the end of the complex claim paragraph:

In addition to a view of Cascadia through the lens of Raymond Williams’ dominant, emergent, and residual components of culture, this paper will shine light on spiritual and environmental movements as origins of Cascadia, the effects of globalization on the movement, and the current, more-nuanced character of Cascadia as a result of this development.

Each paragraph logically corresponds to a point listed in the roadmap. My counterargument paragraph dealt with the common misrepresentation of a complex Cascadia as only a secessionist movement. To address this, I analyzed the current status of pro-independence Cascadian groups. While my sources revealed an undeniable decline in secessionism, I decided to report this with a quiet concession to the opposing perspective:

While the brief flickerings of secessionism—the failed Cascadian National Party website in 2001 and attempts to establish an independence-oriented party in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia—did correspond to increased public support of secessionism in the following years, for many Cascadia supporters, succession is now seen as a lost cause.

It is true that seccession was once on the mind of some Cascadians. I do not deny that ideas of seccession are gone, but rather that "the extreme secessionist portion of Cascadians is vocal, but it must not been seen as representative of Cascadia’s core of bioregionalists." I also take into account the views of my different sources. In my penultimate paragraph, I chose to examine Cascadia through the dominant, emergent, and residual culture model. It's a little bit meta (I think?), because I'm taking a point of view on Cascadia through a point of view on culture, but I think it adds a clearer idea of Cascadia's fluid "place" within our culture. For another example of how I incorporated multiple viewpoints in MP2, go back to my outcome two page and read the quote I added to demonstrate intertextuality.

Turning this entire topic into anything resembling an argument was very difficult for me, because I usually avoid taking a stance on anything until I know enough (which is never), and because Cascadia is a very loose, amorphous thing to argue about. I actually forgot to post a comment of my revised complex claim to the Canvas discussion before the due date back in February, and on the MP2 Outline discussion board, my alleged "complex claim" was sort of just a really long definition of what Cascadia is. But after I got those higher-order issues sorted out and found what I was really arguing, the fleshing out of the argument went pretty well. There were multiple points throughout the process of MP2 that I asked myself "Oh my god, is this actually going to come together?" But I think that, in the end, MP2 fulfilled its goals and fulfilled outcome three.