And then the massacre happened. I sat in my living room and cried and then next day, I got up off my couch and I drove to the Chinese consulate here in Los Angeles and joined in the protests there. They were small protests at first but they grew larger and as the officials of the consulate made it clear that they were taking pictures and getting names when they could hear them, we banded together until they shrunk back inside the building. We built our own Goddess of Democracy from papier mache and a store mannequin and we carried it down the street.

We must have protested for a couple of months and those months taught me so much about myself. It was then that I learned not to take things for granted. To exercise the rights I have because I was damn lucky to have them. And I learned to look beyond America and to not be so ignorant about the rest of the world out there. I learned to think. But most of all I learned that there are things and people worth fighting. Even if they're half a world away.