We look out for everybody, but who is looking out for us?

As a group of people that try to fight for the greater good on their campus, SJA has received constant disrespect ever since 2008 when they changed what they learned about and stood for. From saving the job of teachers on this campus to advocating for students’ mental health, SJA has always tried to better our community. And I feel as though with the work they do, which can be viewed on their website, they don’t deserve the hate they receive, whether it be from teachers and students. 

This school year, I joined SJA. I’ve seen the work that they’ve done through my sister and seeing how much my sister has changed over the years because of it, it kind of inspired me to join. In our first action this year, a march during lunch to bring awareness to domestic abuse, I had thought it went pretty well, but, unknowingly, it didn’t. Classmates of mine talked about how we were being told to shut up (and it’s like if you find us loud, then good because the situation and topic we are trying to combat is grave and it affects people on this campus everyday), people were being prevented from joining the march from the own friends, and sly remarks were being made about the girls whom we were doing it in honor of by students and teachers. This brought light to me on how much hate SJA receives.

During the year where we were all on Zoom, they did a march out to advocate for students’ mental health and the Justice for Steven Taylor campaign, which had really been in such a sunken place due to the distance learning and the pandemic. Some of their demands for their march out were, “4. INVEST IN MENTAL HEALTH RESPONSE AND SUPPORT PROGRAMS IN THE COMMUNITY AND IN SL SCHOOLS, 6. COMMIT TO AND FOLLOW THROUGH WITH ANTI RACIST CURRICULUM, POLICIES, AND PROCEDURES IN SL SCHOOLS,”. These demands were pretty basic, they weren’t asking for too much. They just wanted students, their education and mental health to be taken seriously. Not only did they take the campaign for Justice for Steven Taylor into account, but the mental health of students, in these moments they cared about students, their mental health, and their education.

In 2012, during the time of crazy budget cuts, teachers were to lose their jobs, but a couple of SJA students decided to go on a hunger strike to put the school board in a place where they had to take money out of their rainy day funds and give it to the school to pay the teachers. “On March 6th, three academy students, Veronica Mandujano (18), Kayla Ely (17), and Anai Rosales (18), all graduating seniors, started a hunger strike in response to the district’s refusal to dip into the reserve money,” stated by SJA, on their website,“Despite pleas from academy teachers and their parents to reconsider or modify the strike, Mandujano, Ely, and Rosales have chosen to participate…Ely also stated that, ‘I will be starving myself in solidarity with all of the schools in California starving for funding.’” In this they cared for the teachers and their jobs, they were willing to put their lives on the line if it meant a whole department of teachers weren’t going to lose their jobs, even though the teachers on this campus constantly disrespected and ridiculed the things that SJA does for them.

I feel like people should reflect and look at all the stuff that SJA has done for our school, our district, and our community and decide how they want to feel about SJA. What we do isn’t radical, we are asking for people to treat other people with compassion and common decency. I’m not going to sit here and beg people to respect us and like us, but just think about what we do and come to understand why we want respect and to be treated decently.