Sara Daise on Social Justice

AH: I was reading in the paper about Trayvon Martin and I saw that you helped to spearhead a rally here in Charleston at the College. Can you just talk about what inspired you about that rally are there other kinds of rallies you have done in the past?

SD: When I first heard about it. It made me think of Jena 6 and the College actually took about sixteen or seventeen students to that rally and I was able to go to that. I think that was my first view of a rally or demonstration of a group of people coming together. I mean you read about it in history books, but that was my first time being a part. I was so sad when I read about it, I read about it first on Twitter, and I immediately thought of my little brother and I was just heartbroken and I talked to a graduate of the College who works in the ROAR Office [stands for Reach - Overcome - Achieve Results] and I was saying that we got to do something, we got to do something, we cannot not do something! But I wanted somebody to do something so that I could go

SD: And she was like, these are the people that you need to talk to, so she went with me and we went to go to the people in OID

AH: OID?

SD: Office of Institutional Diversity on campus, and we put it together and there were students who helped and Diversity Ambassadors through OID, who assisted us with planning and organizing and different people from different student groups came together. And I was really happy to see it done, it did not necessarily get the publicity that I wanted, but a good bit of people showed up, people from the community showed up as well. And two days prior I attended the rallies in Marion Square. The first day we went out a few people were talking. I think that a student from Charleston Southern organized that and other College of Charleston student who was affiliated with Occupy Charleston put those two together. The second day we met in Marion Square and marched, I don’t want to say the wrong place that we marched, I think that it is called Memorial Park?

AH: On Columbus or on?

SD: [Shaking head and pointing southwest] Over there, we marched down Meeting Street, and then turned on Broad [St.] and there is a park off of Broad with the think that looks like the Lincoln memorial inside and that was very powerful and it was people from the community, majority Black, parents, and young people a lot of College of Charleston students showed up. It was so inspiring. They brought all of these little kids up front and one of the College of Charleston student, who was in the military, but I am not sure what service, but she put on her uniform and just to assist with the march and so when we were crossing the street, she would just stand in the street and cars recognized her as a servicewoman and obviously she was not acting on behalf of the government, but they recognized her and they respected the line and people were chanting, I am Trayvon! And she started talking about how this is the type of stuff that she fights for in fighting for equality and justice and I was all teary eyed and crying. But, when we did it on campus, it had to be really structured, because we were representing the College and we did not want to say anything that would rub anyone the wrong way. We had a lot of students attend and students spoke about how they felt and some faculty members Dr. [Consuela] Francis, and Dr. [Bernard] Powers, and Dot Scott came the President of the Charleston Chapter of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] and different administrators spoke. I was just really happy to see it all come together and see how people felt and where they want to go from there. And so, it was really nice to see it all come together, I know that my biggest concern is what is next because it is so frustrating and so sad, and I am on Twitter a lot and so I am just reading the different things like, Black people just get mad about something for six weeks and then they don’t care anymore and nobody says anything about the Black on Black crime that is going on, well a Black person shot and killed six White people in the street and nobody is talking about that and then of course Kony 2012 just a few weeks before I heard about that and so it was sad, I just wanted people to. I just want to solve all of the problems and I wish that there was just a little switch where all of the problems would be solved. So it is hard, I want to decide where to direct your focus because obviously there are a greater problem, but I think that it is necessary to focus on something and work really hard to make that better.

AH: So you haven’t, obviously there are so many issues to cover, but you haven’t chosen one to confront?

SD: It is hard, but I think that one issue that really caught my attention, just the talk about Black on Black violence and how so much, so many Black youth are killed and that you don’t even think about it. I was talking to my mom, you don’t think about it, just the things you hear and it is second nature. I remember people who were shot and killed while I was in high school, I remember the summer between my freshmen and sophomore year of college, when I came back to Beaufort, there were seven shootings in Beaufort, people getting shot at parties. You didn’t want to go the club in Beaufort because you might get shot. My high school graduation party, it was not mine, but it was where all of went at after graduation, was at a hotel--an Island/Beaufort fight just broke out; people who had graduated long before us had-two or three years before us, the police was there, people were getting maced, somebody got cut and that stuff is so ridiculous, but it is second nature and it is not that surprising to hear about Black on Black violence and I wonder what would make that less common? So that it wasn’t, you know you expect that and of course when you hear about Black on Black violence it is not making the news necessarily, because of course Black people are killing each other, but why?