I have had several opportunities throughout my life to take part in political activism specifically in the form of protests. These opportunities have become much more enticing as I have entered my college years with the type of idealism that is not uncommon for students today. As a student at Soka University of America, I consider myself to be a global citizen who is knowledgeable about the struggles faced by people around the world every single day. And someday I will do something to put a stop to it… Someday being the operative word there. While I have had the opportunity to attend rallies and protests in the past, I chose not to. Whether it was the workload or that I hadn’t slept enough the night before; the sacrifices I would have had to make in order to attend outweighed the impact I felt my presence would have made. The fact of the matter is that even if I was free of stress and had gotten enough sleep, I still can’t guarantee that I would have taken those opportunities when they presented themselves because frankly I might have had something better to do. Honestly, I probably wasn’t passionate enough about those issues to make the time. April 4, 2018, could have been another drop in the bucket of complacency for me but I instead made the time.
Going in I had no idea what to expect; tear gas and riot police or confederate flags and skinheads. Let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised. We arrived early to try and secure seats in the sleepy little industrial park based Aliso Viejo City Hall in the famously conservative Orange County California. The item on the council agenda which we were there to oppose was the question of whether or not Aliso Viejo should pay to write what is called an amicus brief. The brief was to state support of the County of Orange and several other cities within the county who are joining the Department of Justice in suing the State of California for the passage of Senate Bill 54 (SB – 54) also known as the “sanctuary bill.” Although our group was very passionate about the issue, we fully expected the Aliso Viejo city council to vote against our view. The city council is composed of four Republicans and one Democrat, who is consistently outgunned on politically charged issues such as this. Despite the odds, we felt that it was our duty to defend those who could not defend themselves.