– Dear Mr. President, in those seven countries,
children can't even go to school. And here, we have the audacity
to sit in class and drool. So many children wish for an
education with no limitation, but they live in a nation where
little boys learn about war way before they learn their ABCs. While their families are
thirsty and dying of disease. And when those bombs hit,
there's nowhere left to flee. Are you too blind to even see clearly? Little girls are forced to
learn how to cook and clean but they don't even know how to read. Bound into child marriages
where they will never be free, our countries are starving, and our blood is oozing down the street.
Mothers lose their children
to conflict and violence. Mainstream media turns
their head away in silence. We see their cries for
help as a sign of defiance. Their bones are breaking
from all this burden. Their skin is glass from all this hurtin'. For us, one plus one equals two. But for them, one bomb plus
one bomb equals destruction. One missile plus one missile
equals massive reconstruction. One drone plus one drone
equals more obstruction. They're stranded alone with
no one who will avenge. They hear loud explosions, again and again, but all these children are wishing for is a paper and a pen. My name is Saida Dahir. I'm an 18 year old student
living and going to school here at UC Berkeley.
I started writing poetry
when I was seven years old. I'm from Somalia, and Somalia's
called "The land of poets. Every single person in my family has some sort of story with writing, and with poetry and prose. When I was seven years old, I really got introduced
to it by my siblings, and the rest is history. After the civil war, my
family fled to a refugee camp, and that's where I was born.
I moved to Salt Lake City Utah when I was around three years old. And it's been my home ever since. I don't really know anything
besides Salt Lake City. And it's a very homogenous place. Everyone looks the same,
everyone acts the same. Everyone is the same. I remember being very
badly bullied as a kid because of things that I couldn't change, because of my skin, because of my hair, because of the way that
my family was different. But I guess that really made me wake up. Everything about me, as a
minority is perfectly fine. Being a Muslim, being a
woman, being a refugee, being Black, even though none
of those things are the norm. In 2016, Donald Trump
released that he was proposing a Muslim ban on seven countries. One of those seven countries is Somalia, and I'm from Somalia, which means, if that travel ban had been
put into place 15 years ago, I wouldn't be standing
in front of you today.
I wrote "Paper and a Pen"
talking about why people choose to leave their
countries in the first place because no one voluntarily
leaves their home, their culture, their people,
their language, their lives, unless they're pushed out. And a lot of these people that are affected by this
directly are children. So I talk about why people choose to leave for education, for life, for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness.
Being a first generation college student has really been an amazing opportunity. Although most of my poems are about things that I want to see change, you can also criticize
and be very grateful. I'm very grateful for
the opportunities I have. But I also am very aware
that there's things that have to change, that need to change.
I'm really looking forward to the things that I can make happen
here in this institution, and in the world in general. There's so much power
that's behind your voice, so it's really important
to speak out and speak up. (hip hop music).