Ferguson's Argument Against Terrorism

The police shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest in Ferguson that followed was the first major protest that I followed closely on the news. I watched as police officers that looked like soldiers violently interrupted marches in Ferguson, and around the country. Then, I watched the collapse of Ferguson, Missouri’s unjust system of policing. At the time, I remember thinking that the voice of those that refused to remain silent against a racist institution invoked a progressive movement into the future. From that point forward, I understood that it was the voice of the people that would change unjust governmental practices. I saw this idea of a system being changed from the outside, rather than the inside, not only in cases of brutal policing, but in cases ranging from impunity for rapists on college campuses to gay rights, which culminated in the landmark Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage in every state. The first protest I

When I was fourteen-years-old, I first saw the photograph of the Afghan Girl on the cover of National Geographic. She was a refugee of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan captured in a single frame of Steve McCurry’s camera. The oceanic coloration of her eyes and the ghost-like expression on her face captivated my attention, just as it had captivated the attention of the Western world in 1985. Her photograph brought me into a world of refugees, from Rwanda, during the genocide, to Sudan, during the genocide, to Iraq, during the 2003 invasion. So, it was her ghostly face and sea green eyes I remembered when the refugee crisis in Europe arose. Mass exodus, predominantly from Syria and Iraq, created more photographs of children, with haunted faces, fleeing from war on an ocean the color of the Afghan Girl’s