First Hand History

"I think because of this journey and this path that I was on, I have the mission."

"The vibrations from the shuttle were so big that the fish would jump out of the water!"

"You are basically punishing people for being poor, and we shouldn’t be doing that."

"I had heard about it happening in the workplaces, but I never imagined it would happen to me"

"At this point in my life, I refuse to apologize for who I am."

"No one anticipated planes with 100, 200 innocent people to be turned into weapons, killing everybody."

"The most important tool I have is my voice."

"I think the in many ways it helped me grow stronger too because it made me realize what’s really important about me and it’s not winning the approval of everyone around me."

"It’s kind of a, kind of a nightmare to tell you the truth."

"It was very exciting to be a part of something where you were with other like-minded people."

""I think one of the reasons i got involved, is that, I was so, i was kinda afraid to be an activist then. I mean, it didn’t come naturally to me. And, so now it feels like i can now. I couldn't then, but I can now. I didn’t have the courage, or whatever at that time, or the sureness in myself that it was right, i just had so much indoctrination, i guess in my…. But now i can. I just have no excuse." "

"The myth that this is for the safety of non trans identified students, is exactly that. It’s a myth. There’s no danger there for them. So with President Trump’s removal of that executive order, he doesn’t do anything to make other students safe and he endangers gender diverse students."

"I had no grandparents; I had no uncles, no aunts -- they were all murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps. "

"When you're told that you're not okay, that who you fundamentally are is not acceptable, it's easy to see the need to leave the planet."

"Hate only brings Hate."

"The police shot a dozen tear gas, so I could not see a foot away."

"Mainly we were fighting for freedom. "

"The issues and the problems that people with disabilities really run into is more of... almost like an obliviousness."

"It's really difficult to think that that happened to us, that that was… part of our history of Japanese people, and that something that was so wrong could happen, and I guess that's how it affects us."

"All feminists worked really hard to make sure that we have rights, and we can protect our own bodies, and now that's starting to be stripped away."

"No one is illegal. Money crosses borders, goods cross borders, but workers can’t cross borders? That doesn’t make sense to me. "

"At that time Batumi did not have electricity, so the streets were pretty dark. We started running, we heard them running after us, and my mom took her shoes off because her shoes were making noise, and I took my shoes off."

"He made the people more pressured and with more fear."

"Could you imagine to have your partner in the hospital, dying of cancer or something like that, and for the nurse and doctor to say, 'Well you're not a relative, you can't come in to see your partner'?"