You Dont Need an Education to Create Change

[Music]

[Applause]

2020 has been a

wild year we started off strong with

forest fires and talk of world war

iii we got hit with a virus called coven

19 but we didn’t handle that quite well

enough

so now we’re living in a pandemic that

has robbed us of toilet paper

high school and college graduations and

one of the hottest summers that i can

remember

murder hornets were reported to be

invading people’s homes and killing

people

and aliens were proven to be real

2020 has been absolutely mad and has

brought about change that i don’t

believe

anybody was ready for especially myself

a lot of you may know i was born and

primarily raised in scranton

pennsylvania

home of coal and the office but

scranton has never really felt like a

home to me

my family and i moved back to scranton

after living with my grandparents in the

country

we moved back to the area because a

group of mixed girls going to school in

a predominantly white area

that has never seen a black person

before was detrimental to our

self-esteem

so we moved back to scranton and my

mother has lived here ever

since i can’t remember a time where i

felt included in scranton

or felt welcome at all really

but going to school here and growing up

here i love to be involved in anything

and everything that i can be involved in

extracurricular activities clubs sports

teams you name it i was either doing at

school or at home

i was really bright fun-loving child and

i never thought that would change

until i lost my best friend in third

grade now

when i say lost i don’t mean that she

died i mean that she moved across the

country to north carolina

but it felt like she did and the grief

and loneliness that came with losing

someone that important and that close to

me

really changed the way i thought of not

only myself but of the people and the

world around me

bully started to get to me i no longer

thought my curly hair was pretty

and i started to think twice about the

way i acted and the way i was

as a person and just in class as a whole

i was one of the smartest kids in my

class but i was still targeted bullied

by my third grade teacher

i’m not kidding when i tell you this

like my mother actually had to come into

my class and force her to apologize to

me

because i would go home every day crying

but in her defense

i was a needy child and her way of

helping me

was by toughening me up with passive

insults and quieting my curiosity

this affected me for years later i spent

a lot of time questioning who i was and

who i wanted to be

so when we moved schools and moved

houses i decided that i was going to be

somebody else

i told myself that i was going to be a

cool girl i was going to wear short

skirts and flats because that’s what the

boys liked

and if the boys liked you you were cool

and everybody wanted to be your friend

i started participating in games i

didn’t enjoy and let people touch me in

a way that made me uncomfortable

because if you were a cool girl the boys

liked everybody wanted to be you and be

your friend

which made you a good girl in the eyes

of authority and teachers

because you’re well liked and you’re

unproblematic so

being a cool girl plus a good girl

therefore

made you a smart girl because smart

girls got ahead in life

smart girls were well accepted fit in

everywhere they went and loved by

everyone

and the only way you can be successful

in life or get ahead was to be a smart

girl and that’s what i believed and

that’s what i was told

now when you spend a lot of your life

pretending to be something that you’re

not it really wears on your mind and

who you believe to be who you are and

becomes hard to pretend

i always had an idea of who i was and

who i wanted to be

i just didn’t know that i could be that

person and still be happy

loved and accepted so as you can see

that didn’t last long

now a lot of us grow up with

expectations i know i did and i’m sure a

lot of you can relate to that

and i didn’t i didn’t if i wasn’t being

pressured by

students and authority i was being

pressured by my relatives and my own

choices

i didn’t realize my anxieties until i

reached high school

and everything became too overwhelming

and just too much for me to handle

so i decided that i wanted to move

states and i moved to syracuse new york

i was lured to syracuse with promises of

a happier life

and overall just change i spent my

remaining years of high school

homeless abandoned and traumatized by

domestic and verbal abuse

i was reminded on the regular how

worthless i was

and constantly reminded by people who

claim to love me

that i didn’t offer much and that i

should end my life

that was a really hard negative time for

me in my life

and probably one of the worst decisions

i’ve ever made

but without that experience i want to be

the person i am today

and this way of thinking i had to train

myself to obtain

struggle with bipolar ptsd

and adhd

i was diagnosed about two years ago and

ever since i’ve been doing everything in

my power to take control of

my life and my choices because i spent a

lot of my life

believing that i was hopeless crazy

and undeserving because that’s what i

was told

i just want you to know that if you’re

still navigating your mental health

journey or you’re finding things out

about yourself that you don’t that you

think is wrong or okay

your mental health does not define you

your mental illness does not mean that

you’re any less worthy than anybody else

you just have to try a hundred times

harder to be okay

and that’s perfectly fine if anything it

just makes you a stronger person

and even more worthy and at the end of

the day even more successful

a lot of us don’t know this though

because we live in a society that tells

us that

if we don’t play it safe and keep it

cool and

be normal we won’t be successful i spent

a lot of my life believing this to be

true

but at the end of the day the life that

i live now is a life that i chose

the life i have currently and the way i

am is for me and not for anybody else

because at the end of the day what

matters the most is how you feel

accepted

how you feel the most welcome and what

makes you feel the most okay

and after all of that i still made it on

the stage and i’m here today to tell you

that you’ve got this

as i’ve said i’ve been homeless screwed

over

beaten i’ve self-harmed i’ve attempted

suicide on a few occasions and i’ve been

lost

and i’ve still made it to the stage to

come here and tell all of you guys about

how you can still

make long-lasting effective change not

only in your own life

but in lives of others as well in your

community

this summer i made it my job to be

educated and to educate others

about the world around me now when i say

educated i don’t mean in the way of

textbooks and certificates i mean

educated in the way of

shared experiences controversy and human

choice

i attended many protests this summer the

first one i actually

attended was in scranton and no more

than 100 or so people showed up

but from having that experience and

hearing everybody’s stories

it really made me realize that a lot of

the things that i could relate to

weren’t just happening to me it was

happening to everyone else

i started to think outside of my own

problems and thought that

if i’ve been working on myself for the

past two years and doing my best with

the best i can then

i can help others do the same i attended

any protest within a two-hour radius of

scranton pennsylvania

scranton bloomsburg wilkes-barre

homesdale

the list goes on i collaborated on

protest events with

other northeastern pa leaders

and groups in the area and before i had

realized that i had created a name for

myself

i was now recognized as a leader in the

community people started to recognize me

when

i went out positive and negative

reactions there

i was being reached out to for

interviews and to make appearances to

talk places and being told how

being approached by people to tell me

about how i had a positive change on

their life

or made them look at things differently

or inspire them to

push and stand strong in their beliefs

thus came about creating change for the

people

creating change for the people is a

grassroots community organization that i

founded this year

it was founded and it’s primarily led by

myself but i work alongside with a

handful of other people

volunteers that are pretty consistent in

the process of the things that we do

over the past few months we’ve held

mutual aid drives collected food and

clothing donations giving it to the

community for free

we’ve held free educational workshops

ranging from gender and sexuality to the

prison industrial complex

we do the best we can with what we’ve

got and who we’ve got

and so far i’d say we’ve done pretty

damn good

you don’t need money power or education

to create long-lasting effective change

but what you do need

is love and understanding not only for

yourself and the things that you go

through on the regular but

love and understanding for other people

and their experiences whether or not you

can relate

because either way those things are

happening and those things are just as

important

i didn’t think that i would live to be

22 years old

nor did i think that i would be 22 years

old having done everything i’ve done and

still doing the things that i do now

but i am and i did

i contemplated many ways on how i wanted

to do this talk

i experimented with poetry spoken word

facts the list goes on but at the end of

the day

i realize that the best way that i can

make long lasting effective change

is to come up here and expose my flaws

and my struggles to show that

you are not alone and you can do

anything

because at the end of the day the only

support system that you really need

is yourself and your willpower to do so

you don’t need an education to create

long lasting effective change

and you sure as hell don’t need to be

like anybody else thank you