Becoming A Satyagrahi

In the final unit of my elective humanities class, Global Peace, we continued to study violence and intervention. We also continued our studies of Gandhi and is 4 principles of nonviolence and Sharp's Methods. We did not have much time between our last project before winter break, and this project just after. We had a visit from Under A Tree which is a Socratic school organization. We talked about different beliefs and how we deal with our differences. We visited ALSO which is a violence intervention group where we learned about how to intervene peacefully in violent situations. For this project, we had to do our own violence intervention. Most of the class had been working on this project for the entire term or longer. I chose to use my time coaching skating to intervene with childhood health problems like obesity.

I really did like this project because we actually got to do something real. I really liked working with the kids and I am happy that I got to use my experience to fo a school project. This was a difficult project, because I did the actual intervention a while ago, and I had to piece things back together. I am proud that I had an impact on some people in real life. 

Marsha P. Johnson: Fighting for LGBTQ Rights

For our class Global Peace, we studied worldwide issues and how we might go about solving them in peaceful ways. To dive further into this, we learned about Mahatma Gandhi and his principles of nonviolent actions. The principles or pillars that we studied were: Sarvodaya, Swaraj, Swadeshi, and Satyagraha. Sarvodaya means the uplifting of all or the progress of all. Swaraj means self-governing or self-rule. Swadeshi refers to local economy and self-fulfilling resources. Satyagraha is the practice of non-violent political protest. Along with Gandhi's methods, we learned about Sharpe's Methods. This is a list of 198 ways to protest nonviolently. We also learned about different types of violence. There are structural, cultural. and direct. Structural violence is violence through a large institution or bigger power. This could be through schools or even prisons. Cultural violence is violence through cultural beliefs. This could be something like honor killings in some cultures. Direct violence is direct aggression like murder or any other one on one violent actions. We studied conflict analysis tools as well. We learned about the conflict analysis tree and iceberg. The tree refers to 3 stages of analysis with the causes as the root of the tree, the core problem as the trunk, and the effects as the branches. The iceberg tool shows the hidden problems under the waterline and the visible problems above the waterline. Both of these tools can be used to analyze most conflicts.

I studied Marsha P. Johnson who was a famous LGBTQ activist and Drag Queen. She was born as a male in 1945. Johnson moved to New York at a young age and lived on the streets. She made a living by being a drag queen and prostitute on Christopher Street. She soon joined and created various organizations such as STAR and ACT UP. She was one of the key figures in early LGBTQ rights movements. I learned a lot from Marsha P. Johnson. I realized that no matter how poor you are, or how much of an outcast you are, you can still make a big difference in this world. I also learned that you can be confident in who you are no matter what. Johnson was a social outcast and part of a very small minority in New York at the time. She was a confident progressive activist who didn't let anyone tell her how to live her life.

Pay It No Mind. "A Photo of Marsha. P Johnson." 7, Oct 2017.