[Text on the left: peace be in the eye that is open.]
[Text in the middle: The fashion of oppression is violence, poverty, poor education.]
[Text on the right: Self awareness is key.]
The sweet tension of
waiting for people to arrive combined with the multiple colored lights filling
the room, a dream of cold extremities coursing with adrenaline. I, as the door
person watching the welcome table, got to say hello to most of the people to the
event hopefully making a positive first impression. From my vantage point near
the door I’m torn as to what might have been my most memorable experience. Feel as though personally it might have been
leaving the safety of my door post to venture into the spot light to lead my
activity “Let’s find a write way” but then again it might have been watching my
fellow intern perform an impassioned mime to the song “Encourage yourself”. In
general however I found the whole show to be an interesting experience.
To
me oppression is a negative force that holds people down and away from becoming
all that they can truly and positively become because of hate and a desire for
power. It’s an unnecessary and unfortunate action that many have taken a part
in across a spectrum of ideas. In the fashion show aside from manning the door,
my job was to conduct an activity that engaged the audience with writing. The
first step being to drain the brain of clutter in an unprompted free write in
which once could do anything they wanted. Soon followed by the video “Everything
is Everything” by Lauryn Hill for musical inspiration before jumping into a
prompted free write where the audience was asked to ponder two questions
relating to being a brown person living in a reality of poverty, violence
and/or poor education and what were strategies they would use to positively
make changes in their lives. I chose this activity because I feel that writing
is an important way to express oneself and often in this world people are not
allowed to do so in a way that is free from judgment, free from restrictions
telling them what to think and how to think. Instead this was an attempt to
open up the space for introspective reflection using a powerful tool to get the
wheels turning in people’s heads individually and collectively.
