Youth Sunday 2008 Sermon

This is my sermon that I wrote for youth sunday last year. If you have any questions about the CIW, please ask. Oh, yeah... Burger King gave in, so we can eat there now! Not that I ever did, but it's nice to have options...haha.

After I marched alongside the Coalition of Immokalee workers last November, it seemed like everybody I knew had questions to ask. Time and time again, I would explain. I could feel myself getting louder, angrier as I talked about this injustice, each time I told these workers' story. Even if they didn’t ask about the march, It seems as if everyone I saw got to hear me explain why I wasn’t allowing anyone to eat at Burger King, and see how proud I look I got when I said that I was part of that sea of yellow shirts. I didn't always feel so passionate about these causes, about the work of the CIW. I didn't even want to go to Immokalee the first time. But as soon as we got out of the car, and met some of the people who aren't just fighting for one more penny per pound because it's the right thing to do, because it directly affects them, my views changed. And as soon as I found out there was a march coming up, I knew that I wanted to be there, not one doubt in my mind. I begged my Mom to let me go, she didn't want me going so far away, and I finished all of my schoolwork, taking a dreaded algebra quiz. The next thing I know, I'm helping to load a giant cardboard penny into a bus at the UCF parking lot. As we drove through the night, falling asleep to someone's banjo playing, I began to get excited. As we walked into our hotel room in the early hours of the morning, I got excited. As we stood in a park and tried to find other ways to build our protest art without duct tape, which was sadly still in our hotel room, I got excited. But when I saw that sea of yellow, hungry and tired, but still marching, coming towards me, I was so excited I wanted to scream. I am sure that I began to jump around, doing some strange sort of "justice jig". Then I realized that someone was passing out "Exploitation King” t-shirts, and the jig went into double time. Then we took our first steps as part of that great sea of yellow. By then I was only doing my jig in my head, I don't think I would have been able to jump around, march, and chant all at once, without tripping. As we walked on and on, growing hoarse as we repeated chant after chant, I began to feel really powerful. I may have just been one person in the crowd, one drop of water in that yellow sea, but I can make a difference. I began to see that every step counted, every voice was heard, and every piece of protest art was seen and was making a difference. By the time we had reached the Burger King Headquarters, I was exhausted. I was ready to go to sleep. But I refused to put that giant penny down. We kept standing, looking up through the windows of that humungous office building. As the night went on, that feeling of powerful pride, that I was making a difference stayed with me. I will never forget that feeling, or the march itself, for it was the first time that I stopped simply talking about making a difference, and I actually did something about it. It was the first time I made protest art, first time I shouted chants in Spanish, the first time I took a Church trip without getting homesick, and it was my first trip to Miami. When I planned to go on this march, I thought the only people who would benefit were the farm workers, those who needed that extra penny per pound, but as I look back, I can see that it also affected me. I feel like in those two days that I was gone, I grew stronger, more independent, and caring. I think that’s when you know that you are truly passionate about a cause, when you can see the changes that were made, not only for the people you are trying to help, but in yourself as well.