By Alessandra Cao
As a leader at Berkeley High, I define leadership as taking an issue or cause and convincing other people to follow you. Being leader doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a morally good cause, but it means that you can inspire other people to follow you in your idea or movement. An example of when I saw a positive form of leadership, was during the “black lives matter” protest earlier this year in November and last year near the end of the year at Berkeley High.
I observed all different kinds of communities, small schools, races and ethnicities come together to support a cause. I felt that our different school communities really bonded and came together to help our black community have a stronger voice. I believe this happened because our BSU really got the students to come together and stand up for this very unjust society we live in and decided to act on it, and in a very gracious way. I think that our oppressed students were extremely fed up with all the racism in Berkeley and at Berkeley High, which really pushed them to start a movement at our school. Our protests were very peaceful, and sent a strong message. “Black lives matter” protests have been going on all over the country, but have been more violent and aggressive. However, the message has still come across powerfully.
This experience and movement will always be in my mind forever as a huge inspiration. Watching young teenagers be able to lead a 2,000 person walk was really impressive and will always remind me that if I have something that I want to be heard, I am perfectly capable of making it something big. A movement that I am quite passionate about is against the “fast-fashion” industry, which creates clothes and shoes using horrible sweatshops which not only severely mistreat their workers, but harm the environment as well. I would someday like to make a change in the disgusting “cheap clothing” culture and spread the word about how much purchasing clothing from particular stores does a lot of harm to our world.