Social Justice to me is a place where you can be you and treated like family. Social Justice is place where you can be yourself and not judged. If you want to wear all black instead of your uniform: you can. That’s an advantage that Social Justice High School has, we don't wear uniform. Of course family has their ups and downs. People may be negative. You always have to separate yourself from those negative people and be positive with yourself and feel freely. You have the choice to be around different types of people. If you are around other students that make negative comments towards you it will bring you down. You have the choice to stay and be with those type of people, or find yourself a new group of friends that help you.
During my freshman year everyone was friends with each other. During our sophomore year, everyone started to segregate from each other. Groups of friends with fifteen people in it disintegrated to a group of seven or five friends. I used to talk to those who influenced me negatively. I thought it was okay for my “friends” to make fun of each other to the point that we would all be mad. I would see everyone disrespect each other, I started to do it myself. As I walked away from them I started to get bullied. I remember I was in environmental science with Mr.Segura. I got up to get our lab report and I heard whispering behind me. As I turned around I saw these two girls sit there judge me because I didn’t have a “ big butt” According to them having a big buttocks is something that every girl should have. I started to feel bad about my image, and how I wasn’t “perfect” enough. These comments started to be said every time I would get up in that class. I didn’t tell anyone because it was a personal problem, and well, I didn’t know how to. As I changed of group of friends, I found friends that actually encouraged me to stay in school, do my work, and to talk to them if anything was wrong. I think I should have talked to this group of friends since my freshman year.
Social Justice is a place where you fight for the rights of others that are being targeted because they may be colored or may be lower class. For example, the Chicago Board of Education didn’t want to give money for a school in the Little Village community. So we got their attention by having activists starve themselves until they gave us the money. I didn’t understand what social justice meant as I was a freshman, but as I grew in knowledge I began to understand the real meaning of social justice.
We don’t have justice around our communities/country/world because there's always those negative people. There are those who know they do bad, do bad, and encourage others to do the same. I look around and I see other students making the same comments as those in my freshman year. Yes, I do try to change, but it’s hard doing it by myself.
My vision for struggle is everyone fighting for what they believe. Fighting for others that can’t or are not heard. You help those who are in need. Everyone standing up for each other together. I want things like what Little Village community did. A bunch of people from our own community were fighting for the money that they gave to the schools in predominantly white neighborhoods, even if that money was meant for us. They starved themselves to get the attention how the Board of Education was mistreating us. They misjudged us since we are a lower class community. A community that has color people in it. That’s my vision of a great struggle.
My role in the struggle is helping those who need help. My role in the struggle is taking on a problem of bullying that everyone tries to avoid. To try to make everyone understand that bullying people isn’t right no matter what how they look/dress/act. Being unique is something good, not something strange for everyone to point that out and make them feel bad for who they are or how they look. It’s not right that others are okay with these types of action from students. This is not normal! It’s not okay for students to bully each other. That’s not healthy for the victim, or the bully.
Getting people more aware of bullying may stop this from happening to friends or the bullies themselves. This isn’t okay for students to pick on others for they way they are. Not everyone is the same, not everyone looks the same. We all are different and different is okay, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. As I stand there seeing students pick on another, I always say something, even if they are playing around. It’s not okay to act aggressive. Whether we are in school, or outside, it doesn’t matter. We should take care of each other, not make everyone ashamed of being who they are. Both the victim and the bully are being affected and it’s not okay and NO they won’t grow out of it.