This idea of understanding dialogue is the Bridge to Terabithia; it is what connects you to the other side. I remember that I would see some of the people who attended my school posting these horribly big things on their Instagram story and here I would swipe up and ask them "Why?" and that "Why" was oftentimes met with "I don't know." The idea of dialogue and asking that "Why" is the catalyst to getting people to either change their opinion, or at least become a little more open minded, and that open mindedness is what we need to make any progress in terms of racial justice, socio economic justice, handling a pandemic, and everything in between.

"When I did live in Lebanon, the living situation was really hard. At least in Syria, I had a house, but in Lebanon, I lived in a small tent with all 11 members of my family. It wasn't that small but of course it was smaller than a house. Around us, there were small tents for other Syrian families to live in. These families came from different cities, but all of our living situations were similar. Each family did different chores within their tents and they all had their own water, but it was not clean at all. When I came to America, the doctors here diagnosed that I had many diseases that came from our unclean water. It was an unhealthy environment."

"I do think antisemitism has been very normalized, which is kind of scary because I felt like I grew up in a way where if I saw something that was anti-semitic, I didn't even realize it was anti-semitic because I just thought it was normal. I think it's going to be really hard to change that. People have normalized antisemitism as being anti-Israeli or anti-Israeli government, and although these issues might overlap a little bit, the two groups aren't the same thing and it's really disheartening to see that people are normalizing antisemitism on that basis."

"I heard someone say in another workshop that every work and every policy that we do, especially in schools, is either racist or anti-racist and, even under different circumstances, it can easily fall into those two categories--one or the other. I do think that my high school is trying to be more inclusive over the past couple of years and trying to look at its programs, reforms, and policies through an equity lens."

"Because of the American Dream, families really neglect this idea of emotion-talking and confronting mental health issues, so it takes a second generation to have this conversation and begin destigmatizing the conversation about mental health and within the Asian American community at large. There’s this mentality that it is family values versus mental health, but in reality, it goes hand in hand. It'll be an uphill battle, but I think it's a conversation that we need to have."

"We are conditioned to view Colombians in a certain mold: fair-skinned, dark hair, dark eyes, and lots of curves. However, it really doesn't take into account the amount of diversity that there is in Colombia and in different parts of South America as well. These places include indigenous people, white Latinos, and a lot of Afro Colombians are in Colombia throughout the coast as well, but often we don't see that representation in the media."