Philosophy
For me, social justice means that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Social justice workers work hard to open doors of access and opportunities for everyone, especially for those in greatest need. For example the hunger strikers fought to build this school known as Greater Lawndale High School Campus. This is a great example of social justice because the community started a hunger strike because they wanted to build a community high school for their children to have access to education. Social justice is shown by this because the community fought together to give their children an opportunity in order to succeed in life.
During my sophomore year we had a situation in which our interim principal removed our AP classes at the beginning of the school year because she thought that we weren’t capable of taking them. This situation made me feel mad and hopeless because she had taken many opportunities away from us. Many students felt that way there for students decided to give their opinions of the injustice that was occurring at our school, but nothing was being done. The students’ voices were not taken seriously, and it was through the actions of a sit-in and a march in our community that led to our demands to be finally met. If we truly wanted to have social justice then we had to let our actions speak for us because as it has always been said actions do speak louder than words. Social justice isn’t easy to be obtain, but people have to come together to achieve it. They have done protests, marches, sit-ins, walkouts, petitions, etc. just to get their points across. For example, Martin L King Jr. led a march to the bridge (Selma to Montgomery) for voting rights. Judge Frank Johnson helped end segregation and also helped by enforcing the voting right in the south. With this motivation social justice would become a bit easier to obtain. My contribution in the struggle to obtain social justice is to improve awareness of the injustices about teen pregnancy. I will improve awareness by letting adults and teenagers know of the mental and physical effects these injustices can cause teen moms. Stereotypes are created and make teens feel like they don't have a future. As a teen I believe being a teen mom isn't the end of the road. My fire is to put an end to the inequalities teen moms face such as the lack of motivation to achieve. The issue of health & sexuality rights of media and teen pregnancy is connected to social justice. People see teen moms as a bad thing and that needs to be stopped. Just because they are teenagers doesn’t mean they can't push themselves a little bit harder for them and their kid. It is not fair that teen moms have to live through the social inequality of stereotypes and lack of motivation. It is clearly an inequality that many teens are kicked out of their house just because they become pregnant at a young age. I chose teen pregnancy as my project in order to increase knowledge of how teen moms can have a future. |