Dustin Johnson / Roundup
More than 100 people filled The Great Hall Thursday night for the “Justice: Why Should You Care?” discussion panel.
Several campus organizations sponsored the event, including the Sociology Club, Philosophy Club, Gay-Straight Alliance, Black Student Union and the Labor of Love Club.
Paul Hicks, the event host and instructor of philosophy welcomed Taye Aston, Micki Dickhoff and Tanya Cole, three prolific activists, whom shared their experience and involvement in bringing justice to people in the world who needed it most.
As attendees began arriving, they were treated to a slideshow that displayed images of protests from the Civil Rights Movement, victims of abuse, and statistics of AIDS carriers.
In the background, iconic political songs such as John Lennon’s “Imagine” and U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” blared through the speakers, foreshadowing the subject matter that panelists hoped to tackle in the panel.
Hicks opened the panel with the rhetorical question, “Why should I care?”
“As a heterosexual,” he said, “I can marry whomever I want and I can divorce whoever I want.”
Eighty percent of trans-persons are attacked annually, he added. 80 percent of all people worldwide live in poverty by American standards.
“But why should I care?”
That is just the question Aston, Dickhoff and Cole answered.
Aston, a middle school teacher within the LAUSD and long-time member of AIDS Coalition, described how she first became an activist in 1985 when the HIV virus and AIDS were still being spoken in whispers.
No effective medical treatment was available to carriers and the world began using gay people as scapegoats for the spread of AIDS.
“There was a time when I went to 10 to 15 funerals a week,” she said.
Over the last two decades she has been involved in a number of AIDS awareness protests and has been arrested five times, a fact of which she is not ashamed.
“Don’t think we haven’t had non-violent revolutions in this country,” she said. “There have been powerful acts of violence to change the way people think.”
Dickhoff, a filmmaker who has recently returned from showing her latest film in Kenya, described how her involvement dates back several decades.
“I came up in the sixties when there was a lot of opportunity for activism,” she said. “I made a film that got a lot of irate phone calls and I knew I was onto something.”
She asserted that instilling change for the better in the world, even if for one person, can create a snowball effect.
“You can make change for one,” she said. “Because that change can improve the life of the next one and the next one.”
Brandy Cuellar, a 21-year-old Pierce philosophy major, enjoyed listening to what Dickhoff had to offer.
“[She] was the most interesting because of all she had to go through to back up her claims,” said Cuellar.
Cole, witness for Peace Southwest Regional Organizer, has travelled around the world for her activism but told the audience you can help trigger change no matter where you are.
“You can start a revolution all around you,” said Cole.
Robert Hovanisian, a 21-year-old film major and co-president of the Philosophy Club, admired Cole’s dedication.
“I like that [Tanya] actually went out in the field and put her life at risk,” he said.
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