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Editor’s Note:

This blogs was written by the three 8th grade students from the New Village Leadership Academy in Calabasas, CA. They went to Occupy LA to get a firsthand experience of the protest.  

Sarah, Isabella and Camryn’s school, New Village Leadership Academy encourages students to think for themselves and use as part of their teaching process, field trips to gain a firsthand knowledge of the ‘real world’ and educate themselves to become leaders and not followers. 

The trio of girls were accompanied by their teacher Chase Orton, and Sarah’s mom, Deborah.

We had been hearing and seeing the protesters for a while now.  Out of curiosity we decided that for us, as young adults, the blogs and videos were not enough.We needed to see it for ourselves plus the fact that it would be a once in a lifetime experience.

We were hoping to see and learn what life was like to be an “occupier” – from their end of the story and not just as how the news had been portraying them, which was as disruptive, erratic, protesters.

When we arrived at the Occupy LA site outside City Hall in downtown Los Angeles, we saw a sea of tents and a bunch of peaceful protesters. 

Some were sitting in their tents, others were chanting or on a meditation walk, some people were eager enough to come up to us and give us a “history lesson” on what their motive was for protesting and allowed us to interview them.

We are all so used to hearing what the press wants us to hear which is mostly negative information and we are never really hearing what the protesters have to say. 

We thought that it was an educational experience to talk to them and have them share with us their beliefs.  It was really a unique opportunity to witness something that will forever be a part of history.

At first we worried about the violence because we had been seeing videos of the other ‘Occupy’ protests and how crazy it could get, but to our surprise what we experienced, was very peaceful.

We found it interesting how one of the protesters we interviewed said something inspiring (in a way), because these people were coming from all walks of  life, the homeless, the unemployed, students, union members, blacks, whites, Latinos and people who felt that the only way to get their opinions heard was to have a group protest. 

They all came together to demonstrate their beliefs. In general, Occupiers are against the banks, credit card companies, and big businesses’ influences on the government. 

They also feel that the government is misspending ‘their’ money. They are also protesting at the universities (state schools) that students can’t afford to go to because of doubling the cost in tuition.

They are protesting against the government cutting services, i.e. education and aide for poor people. Lastly, Occupiers are upset that people don’t have jobs because the jobs have been outsourced to other countries, and houses have been foreclosed because owners don’t have enough money due to losing their jobs.

One man nicknamed “Dollhouse Dude,” (because he used to walk around with a dollhouse on his head,) brought up an interesting point saying, “we are all homeless because we are serving the landlords.”

From this experience we learned that no matter what your background is you can come together and make a change.

Sadly we feel that the government isn’t giving the 99% a big enough voice.

What we want people to know is that these protesters are just trying to fight for something they believe in and we wish that there could be a way for the 99% and the 1% to come together to form a 100%.

We really hope that our experience has inspired you to go, because we wanted to formulate our own opinions and we really want you to do so too.

America is supposed to be about freedom of speech, it is our democratic right and we hope that the government and police respect this right. 

WE (Sarah, Isabella & Camryn) are 13 years old, WE are the future, WE have a voice too and we hope that other young people  will also find their voice and support this right.