I cry. I cry for those who continue to sit in silence as the truth that we hold as Hoosiers and United States citizens is taken from us. The very identity that we are united is no longer our natural state; it is a distant past, and will never be our future. I cry.
I have spent far too long watching and waiting for the moment someone steps up. Someone stands out from the crowd and demands the quality of our education, healthcare and economy. Some do stand out, but are they there to stand up for us, or to give us a sliver of hope that someone may fight for us?
I am tired of politicians standing on the tightrope, always being held up by stacks of money given to them by people who have never once sat down and wondered what it was like to decide between rent and food. I am tired of fake activists saying they are going to work for us, only to be fighting for the same thing for 50 years. I am tired of living in a world where I am scared.
However, the one thing that I am most disappointed in, the thing that drives me to insanity, is the fact that we have let our generation become the next fake activists. We hide behind a screen, liking the posts that mean so much to us, only to then not want to participate in the system. Don’t you understand? Not participating in the system is exactly how a democracy dies. Once we let go of our control and understanding of our government, once we let the thin veil of “elections” appease our appetite for the political process, that is the moment we can call ourselves subjects.
As we graduate, as we go into the world with the power to change everything with our actions, we need to step away from being warriors of social media. The class of 2025 is the largest class to every graduate in the United States. There are 3.9 million students becoming full functioning members of our society. We can no longer hide behind phones. We can no longer hide our true activism.
My cry isn’t out of sadness; it isn’t out of personal pain. It is a war cry. It is a battle cry that must be heard in every high school in the country. Who has the keys to the social media prison we have been sent to? We do. But the keys are not within our grasp. They are being dangled in front of us like cat toys by companies that withhold the truth.
They will get tired eventually of holding that key, though. Once they make one wrong move, one mistake in the direct death of our truth, we have to take it back. We unlock the gates of the cell and march forward together.
Oh, how far we could march if we took it upon ourselves to look beyond the screen.
