It was, I felt, no longer about me. It was about all the people. Yes, I did want to be a teacher, but in my mind, it was about all the stories I’d heard about someone’s brother or sister, or their father, their mother, their cousin, or they themselves—and how they had this problem or that problem and no one was listening and things weren’t happening. A dam had broken. After all this time, all the years of being ignored and dismissed, I felt like we had an opportunity to call attention and start to make it right. We could do something.
