Burnt Hair

Madeleine Hagey

Compassion is a skill I consider an important aspect of a community. A compassionate

advocate is someone who feels strongly about problems and situations and speaks about them

with understanding and care. I am a compassionate advocate because I have empathy towards

others, I can speak up, and I always try to be understanding of someone's situation despite their

attitude.

Empathy is something I have a lot of. When I see someone hurting I feel hurt. When I

see someone happy it makes me happy. When I hear about something bad happening to

someone it makes me feel bad. I was extremely empathetic during our whole school houseless

training. In houseless training we learned about the personal stories of people who are currently

houseless, the things houseless people are denied, and what we can do to support our parts of

the community who are houseless. When we were learning about personal stories of houseless

people, our guides talked a lot about children without homes. Sometimes it was just because

they grew up that way and sometimes it was because they didn’t have any way to make money

or have a support system. They talked a lot about how there’s a large number of teenagers that

go to schools and colleges who are houseless and can’t get all the materials or help they need

because of prejudice. I have never had to live without a roof over my head, or a fear of not being

able to eat or drink for a couple of days, but I can understand all the struggle people who do

have to face and how important it is not to judge someone based on how they look, the

education they’ve received, or where they live. Since learning more about homelessness in

Tucson I’ve advocated by trying to be mindful of their spaces and trying to avoid corporations

that don’t respect our houseless population.

 Speaking up can be both my strength and stretch. Even opening up my mouth to voice a

thought can be hard, but spreading awareness is something I try to do. I have been a part of a

lot of projects that I think would fit this topic. What I decided on was my 6th grade humanities

Make-a-Board-Game project. In this project, Adrian partnered us up and gave us multiple topics

to design a board game on and then create in real life. I was partnered up with Romi (a curse I

have never been able to rid myself of since this project…) and we decided to do a Chutes-and-

Ladders-but-also-Monopoly based game called Get to the Top. In this project Romi and I added

a lot of small details that added up to what it feels like to be living in a capitalist society such as:

Random moments when you need to pay money to the bank (I wanted to add more of these

blocks), how complicated the rules were even though it was a game designed for children (It

feels just like real life😐), and small inconsistencies that the creators didn’t bother patching up

(Like CEOs in business tycoons). All of these made it feel like being someone who constantly is

gaining money only to lose it. When you finally get to a good place in the company you’re

working at you’re either thrown into the loop again or you’ll lose all your money. Romi and I

created this game because we wanted people to be aware of how unfair and backwards

capitalism is when it becomes large corporations controlling everyone's life. By creating this

game we wanted to advocate for the working class.

Trying to understand someone's situation is something I do subconsciously. The way

someone acts is usually a reflection of what they’re going through, and I always want to keep

that in mind. When I was in 6th grade and still using Discord, I had a specific group of people I

would always talk to in a large group chat or individually through messages. At the time, one of

the people I was friends with began changing their behavior. When I knew this person who
we’re calling H, they were very calm and friendly. They were close to someone I’m calling R,

and the two would do a lot of playful bullying towards another friend I’m calling T. Around the

end of 2021 to the beginning of 2022, H began to get less friendly and more insensitive to other

people. H would often act like they didn’t care about R’s thoughts and generally ruder to other

people. R would often talk to me about how they thought H didn’t like them anymore or how

annoying H was being. I didn’t add much into these conversations because while I sympathized

and agreed with a lot of what R was saying, I didn’t think it was for no reason. R and H didn’t

stay friends for much longer and H moved to another city. Later when R told me about some of

the other things that happened when R and H were still friends, I could tell that a lot of what H

would say and how they acted was based on insecurities and family problems, it isn’t an excuse

to a lot of the things H would say but it nonetheless makes it more understandable.

To conclude, throughout my time at Paulo Freire I’ve been a compassionate advocate. I

have been empathetic during times when we have learned about the people society hasn’t

given enough to. I have spoken up for those whose voices aren’t being heard. Lastly, I have

been understanding in hard situations. Moving forward, I will continue to show compassion not

only for my community but also for the world and the problem it’s facing. I will also continue to

speak up for people who are being oppressed.