When Praxis #2 was first introduced to us, I immediately knew I wanted to talk about my high school’s social justice club, Intersections. As a freshman and sophomore in high school, I never associated myself with politics or anything related to social issues; I was simply living in my own world, only worrying about what directly affected me. However, one day in my junior year, I accidentally stumbled across this club as I was trying to find a place to eat my lunch. While I sat and ate my salad, I remember listening to Selena and Sarah (who were the president and co-pres of the club at that time) talk about abortion rights. After the meeting, I felt enlightened yet so enraged at the same time, wondering why it was acceptable for men to dictate a woman’s body. From this day on, my friends and I started attending Intersections meetings regularly. In my senior year of high school, one of my close friends, who happens to be more politically conservative, applied as an officer for this club and was appointed. Because of this, my friend group became even more integrated with the club and we started having regular conversations revolving around politics and social issues. At that point, I knew social justice was something I was truly passionate about. 

In my interview with Selena and Sarah, I asked them about how their club started, what the biggest obstacles were, specific issues that they are passionate about, and why their club is named Intersections. Although I had been a member of this club for two years, I never really knew their origin story. To my surprise, I learned that Intersections was a fairly new club that started in 2016, in part, due to Trump’s presidency. Now that I reflect on this, social justice is such a huge aspect of people’s lives and on social media today. The fact that there was not even a club or sphere to discuss social issues at my high school before 2016 reveals how little people cared about it. Furthermore, what I found shocking was when Selena and Sarah mentioned the struggles in earning a credible reputation and being taken seriously by other students. Growing up in such a liberal environment, I never would have thought that people would ridicule others for caring about social issues. I seldom hear the conservatives around my school complaining about how difficult it was for them to express their opinions because they didn’t want to be “cancelled” by everyone else. Before I conducted this interview, I never thought about how this was also an issue of many liberals (since, as I mentioned before, our community is seemingly so left-wing and progressive). As Selena mentioned, there is such a negative connotation for those who care about social justice, with people painting them as the sort of annoying individual who can’t listen to anyone with a different opinion speak. What Intersections does so effectively is diminishing this connotation by creating an environment that focuses more on being informative rather than shooting down other ideas. From my experience in the club, most of the members are incredibly open minded which encourages those who hold differing opinions to come to meetings. As I reflect on what Selena and Sarah have said about their process in earning respect, I think this is something that is not emphasized enough: if you are trying to create change, you should seek conversation with those who perceive things differently because it is much less effective when everyone already agrees with you. This also connects with Hooks’s emphasis on the importance of love and community in All About Love. Intersections has successfully created a community where not only those who are hurting can discuss their struggles, but also those who possess opposing viewpoints can learn and seek empathy for others. 

As for the form of media I chose, I wanted to do a combination of moving pictures, still images and audio. I decided to keep Selena and Sarah’s faces in the interview but not mine because I felt that I served as a distraction. Additionally, Selena and Sarah agreed that it was alright for me not to preserve their anonymity and I believe that showing their identity is more effective in making the interview resonate personally. My incorporations of the images are from the Intersections website (I had permission from Selena and Sarah to use them) as I wanted to provide some examples of their meetings/events. Overall, I curated a video interview because I felt that the composition of my interviewees, their words, background music, and still images personalized a seemingly irrelevant organization and helped evoke emotion. I believe that media plays a crucial role in inclusion and social change as it not only serves as a platform for storytelling, but induces others to take action as well. While Intersections was an activity of my past, I think it was important for me to document the club’s effectiveness in achieving transformative change so that others can be inspired and learn from this if they want to initiate something similar.