I am young, not yet out of high school. That being said, already have I been directed to the path of feminism and activism. People tell me that I am too young, that I do not know of what I speak, that I am not qualified, ready, smart enough, or experienced enough to understand the world. Perhaps not.

But what I do understand is that in the past years, I have seen my black sisters and brother fall like autumn leaves without cause or provocation. I have watched as people forgot that a police officer should never resort to lethal force as a means of subduing a person. I listened as society began to criminalalize victims of those people put in place to protect us: “Well, the victim was no angel.”

They made excuses for violence, preached tolerance of certain sects of cultures that allowed women’s faced to be burned with acid, justified the unwarranted death of more than a score of young ethnic people, dug deeper the trench that divides the races, told the weeping girl that it was her fault for wearing that skirt, kicked students out of class for sexy shoulders, claimed that the systemic injury suffered by POC at the hands of a system that was never designed to protect them wasn’t there and that instead, POC were somehow being racist to white people.

They say that you cannot change everything, or everyone.

But you can sure as hell try.

And try I will.