This is just pressure.
Google is my tool and that's how I found her. As I sat here delaying my time in order to bring on the pressure so I can continue to work at my highest level of productivity I decided to google her and see if she even had a Facebook. She had assigned us to read an article about Afro's and the use of hair styling products in society which negate natural black beauty. It was something I didn't look forward to as much as I thought I would. I'm a biology major, gimme a break!
The pages opened up and I began to read the parts that looked interesting. My eyes lit up when I realized that she was something of a revolutionary in the 60's. She was involved in the Black Panther Party. I'm not just talking about as a follower but as a leader who directed whole entire chapters of panthers. She was an activist and also had become a political prisoner at some point in her life. The story unfolded as I clicked through pictures, checked her bio on her website. Throughout it I saw hardship, perseverance, and above all else, I began to feel unsurmountable pride to being this person's student.This was the woman who emailed me the add code so that I could have enough units for this semester. She sat calm and collected at the beginning of each class asking us to determine what was meant by the term "Gender & Popular Culture." This was a woman who read our papers and marked them accordingly with light cursive grazes of a pencil that I could barely read. She waited in awkward silence and called on people at random hoping that they had read the articles and could contribute articulately to the class discussion. Each day I hoped she wouldn't pick on me because I never felt like I had anything noteworthy to say. This was the woman who had encouraged us to protest for our rights as students but whom none of us paid much attention to after 10:50am on Tuesday and Thursdays.
So I sat here and attempted to keep myself away from the articles about afro's, dreadlocks, and all articles pertaining to "Gender and Popular Culture" that she assigned only to stumble across something far more intriguing. By coincidence or fate, maybe even sheer luck, what I came across sparked my interest in a woman who I knew virtually nothing about. She was just another professor. She never crossed my mind as being anything more than a resource from which I would gain some better understanding about the media or popular culture. During the semester I would apply myself to the class, produce the papers she requested weekly, and get my best grade and move on, books closed, papers recycled, and done.
Today my mind's changed and that's not the mentality I have at all anymore. Through her brief biography I've learned that this woman has done something incredible with her life. At the tender age of 18 she became a leader of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles and continued to open another chapter in New Haven after becoming a widowed, single parent just a year later. She writes books and enjoys poetry, and people write books about her and Angela Davis's struggles. In my world, she has become a celebrity far better than any other on T.V.
For those who don't know, I'm all about revolution. I stand up for what I believe and I believe in the rights and equality of all those around me. My voice is loud and it speaks many words at rapid pace so I speak for those who are silenced. Most of all, I admire those who have given themselves selflessly for the betterment of people. Those who, like Rosa Parks, stood their ground and started up an entire movement, those who used their words and not war to create the change they wished to see in the world like Gandhi, those who showed the greatest compassion for the poor and helpless like Mother Teresa. Those, like Ericka Huggins, my professor at San Francisco State University, who sparked a curiosity in the heart of the most eager students to follow in similar footsteps down a path for equality and justice; to seize back the education that is being taken away from them by the hands of our government.
We can all pretend that this is just the way things are. We can all continue to pay larger and larger amounts of tuition and pretend that these cuts are necessary and our education is adequate when, in reality, like an apple, it has fallen so far from the tree. As a child I always dreamed of what college would be like. The greatest machines packed with the latest technology. A place were the roads were literally paved in gold and the knowledge one could possess had no limits for any student, regardless of sex, color, or age. In college, you were an unstoppable force that maintained momentum and went out into the world to make it better in some way. However, San Francisco State University and all other universities in the CSU system have fallen short of my imagination of the perfect college experience. People graduate year after year and spend the rest of their days filling out countless applications to no-name jobs that won't ever hire them. Not only this country, but this state has fallen so rapidly down the charts that sometimes it almost seems unreal.
Today a flame was ignited in my mind through the life of a woman I knew nothing about.
A woman held her head up and saw change occur before her eyes. She shows us that it is possible to stand up for what we believe in.
It's our turn to be the change so let's not sit around and wait for the bandwagon.
It may never come around.
Only those who attempt the absurd, achieve the impossible...- Einstein
