I am trying to find positivity and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m still alive. I can still fig

“I always thought this was the way things were supposed to be. I didn’t know that broken chairs or a lack of resources were out of the ordinary for schools in the US. The area I grew up in lacked a lot of things, and I didn’t notice this until I got to SPU, and it hurts my heart. It hurts when people say “that’s just the way it is” when talking about wage gaps. My parents have always fought with poverty. My mom moved here from Mexico because one of my brothers passed away before I was born. I never knew why, but I guess it was because he was malnourished and the way they were living was unhealthy. So my parents gave up everything for their kids and came up here. I remember when I was too young to understand, my siblings were doing something behind a Safeway, and I never knew what it was until recently, when they told me that they had been going through the garbage in order to find some food. Even though my parents didn’t have much at all, they still gave me everything, working night jobs, getting very little sleep, it was all for me and my siblings. Even though I didn’t have the nice Nike shoes or cool laptops, they gave me a home and raised me to work hard at what I’m good at, and that got me to where I am now. I almost didn’t believe the results of the election. It was weird. My mom stayed strong through the results in front of me, but once I left the house, I knew the emotions would take over. I walked back in and found her crying. She left her home and her family so that she could give my siblings a better future. The fact that Trump and half the country want to push my family back out of the country is hard. Since I’ve lived in Washington all this time, (a typically accepting community) I didn’t think that racism still existed here, but clearly after this election it’s easy to see that racism is still thriving. I am trying to find positivity and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m still alive. I can still fight for what I believe and I can still enjoy my time doing so, regardless of who is in office. I’m alive and I’m breathing and that is something that has given me the motivation to keep moving forward.”