Standing outside a classroom at San Francisco’s George Washington High School, Zaida Maria Lopez, 16, watched her Mexican friend knock into a Russian Jewish girl.
“What’s your problem?” the Russian girl snarled, ticked by the apparently intentional push.
The Russian girl pushed back. The two girls swore at each other and started to wrestle. The Mexican girl smacked the Russian in the face, resulting in a bloody nose.
According to Lopez, some teachers saw what happened but did nothing. Lopez broke up the fight. She took the Russian girl to the bathroom to help wash her face.
Lopez, who is from Nicaragua, told the Russian girl to put the fight behind her, adding, “‘I’m sorry it happened.’ I said that if you got to know [the Mexican girl], you wouldn’t be fighting.”
Lopez’s reputation for sticking up for those who are being picked on has earned her the respect of her teachers, who nominated the 10th-grader for trip to Washington, D.C. sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League earlier this month.
She was one of seven teens from Northern California — and 110 from throughout the nation — to be selected for ADL’s second annual National Youth Leadership Mission. Other Bay Area students were Emile Brock of George Washington High, David Yap of El Cerrito High, and Cliff Rosell and Carley Davidson of San Marin High in Novato.
Convening in the capital to discuss issues of bigotry and hatred, Lopez said the students arrived still shaken by the Littleton shootings.
Some said their schools beefed up security after the incident. Lopez said her school was eerily quiet. “Only one teacher mentioned it. People felt that it happened over there and it can’t happen here. I didn’t talk with friends. They were sad. I guess the school doesn’t care. I guess most schools don’t.”
The kids talked with ADL organizers about what they could do to fend off racism and prejudice.
On her own turf, Lopez deals with potentially explosive situations by defusing them. “When you see prejudice, you should take it on not with anger and fighting, but you’ve got to be civil. You don’t have to try to get them back, you can sit calm and talk to them.”
Lopez and her peers talked with ADL officials about how not only racial and religious minorities often get picked on, but also “chubby people and people with glasses, for example.”
In one of her classes, Lopez sat near a smart, shy girl who was teased daily by the rest of the class. The other kids said the girl smelled.
Lopez went to the teacher and asked her to stop the problem. She did. “I step in for my friends and also for people who are being taken advantage of,” Lopez said.
The centerpiece of the ADL trip was a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum’s main hall, replicating a train station during deportation, immediately caught her attention. The exhibits made her break down in tears.
“I got really sad and sort of mad that this happened and people stood by.”
While still inside the museum, Lopez was compelled to write a poem titled “In Memory of the Suffered.”