That inspiring quote above has become our University's
motto, the last line of the famous sonnet The New Colossus, written by Emma
Lazarus in 1883, and is about the Statue of Liberty and how it welcomes
immigrants from all over the world. To us, the students at Dream University - which
is open to all who want the right to continue their education - it means we are
lighting the pathway to our "golden door", the rights that have been
denied to us, the right to an education and a bright future. In many ways, what
we are building here shows our struggle, but also our happiness and good
moments, and through all of that, we have become closer to each other and have
learned many things which otherwise we would've never thought of before. From
Political Science all the way to Street Theater and Public Relations classes,
we have come together to hear about love, hardship, bonding, and what brings us
all together to want to make this a better country. With so many incredible and
intense things going on, it's no surprise we have attracted both local and
national media. And I wanted to share with you the best of these experiences.
From the very first day our group has been working hard on
something many organizations don't quite deem important enough; the ability to
bond with one another, to get to know each one in a personal level, to build
love within the movement, in order to do the best job we can. I am personally
very glad this topic has come up with such ease to us, and we have since then
made several activities that included one-on-ones, story telling, and the
sharing of personal ideals and experiences. Our second day of classes was a
particularly hard day for me, seeing as my sore throat/cold attacked with full
force, and the intense heat didn't help. One of the activities we had was the
splitting into groups to share our personal stories of why we came to D.C. to
attend Dream University, and by the end of the class each group chose one
person to go to the front of the class and share their particular reason. I felt
weak and unmotivated thanks to my sickness, and ended up crying when asked to
share my story within my group, and later, to my surprise, they asked me to
share it to the rest of the class because they felt it had been the most
emotional and powerful one. When asked, many of the other students agreed that
public speaking, as hard as it is, is definitely easier when you don't have to
speak about yourself. I cried for several minutes after my speech, and as a
very closed off person when it comes to my personal stuff, it was something I
didn't feel comfortable with. But the amount of understanding and love I
received was something that touched me deeply, and several people walked up to
me throughout the rest of the day to ask for a hug and to say they thought I
did great. "You can't go wrong with something that comes from the heart",
Milo, another student that came from Massachusetts, told me by the end of the
day. It came to my understanding that the sharing of personal experiences
within our movement is something not only amazing, but necessary to do. We
realize we are not alone in our hard times, that there are many, many others
who feel the same way we feel, who go through the same things, walk the same
shoes. That makes us closer, stronger. That makes our movement stronger.
We learned more about this issue during our Public Relations
class on our third day, taught by an amazing woman named Charlene Carruthers. She
preached that public relationships should be based on Love, Justice, and
Freedom, then went on to explain that those relationships are intentional, an
exploration of shared values and purposes, an exchange of resources and skills,
a shared commitment, all which end up in growth and learning over time. This
was by far one of my favorite moments ever since I got here, and I made sure to
take down plenty of notes from this particular class. Charlene did an amazing
job in passing on the message that Love Ethic is important when building a
movement like this, while teaching about good leadership at the same time,
making me realize how deeply entangled those two are, and that they should
always go hand in hand. She even went as far as to mention that, in all of the
organizations and movements and meetings that she has ever participated in, the
youth movement and meetings have been the only ones that she's seen talk about
and put importance in love and bonding between our members. In a way, her class
was a Leadership Training as well, giving value to the fact that building
connections builds power, and that power should be relational instead of
dominant; power WITH, not power OVER. Learning to be a leader is a healing
process in itself. All of this helps in building our young people to be the
leaders of tomorrow. And what absolutely amazing leaders we will be.
Yet another very interesting point to me was the amount of
media coverage we got ever since we arrived at Lafayette Park, the spot in
front of the White House where we have been holding our classes out in the open.
Both The Washington Post, locally, and CNN, nationally, have taken pictures,
videos, and interviews of us, and by the third day we already had an article
written about us in The Associated Press, which can be found online. It was my first experience with the media, and I felt both excited and scared
at the same time. I was asked to do a personal interview with The Washington
Post, where I shared part of my situation, the fact that I am undocumented, my
hopes and aspirations, and what had led me to come to D.C. to be a part of this
big movement. Now, it should be understandable why somebody in a position such
as mine would be somewhat afraid to share such things in a public interview
which will be streamed online and available to essentially the whole nation. But
these are risks that I believe every person who has come here, such as myself,
have been aware of from the beginning. My train of thinking leans towards "If
I don't do it, who will?". After all, this is an issue that is particular
and dear to our hearts, and if each one of us is here today, it is because we
could not stand to sit in the comfort of our homes - those of us who do have
their own homes - waiting and wishing that something will be done for us. I
know I could not stand it. This action was made with the intention of it being
big enough to impact this nation as whole, in an incredible way, to be
something never done before, to make people stop and look, struck by what's
going on, by what we are showing, to make them feel deep within their hearts
our struggle and our need for change. And for it to be as big as that, what we
need the most is commitment and the will to believe. Without commitment, we get
nowhere. In the presence of doubts, we fail. In order to get the Dream Act
passed, we must believe with all our strength, hearts and souls that it WILL be
passed. I know I believe. I deeply, deeply believe. Do you?
