My generation's childhood and youth were quite tough. According to our parents and grandparents, their lives were also very tough. We experienced the worst of poverty. We witnessed anarchy before the Sept. 12 period and experienced afterwards the oppression the Sept. 12 military brought with it. We were treated badly in schools, buses, government offices, hospitals and military bases because we were from the country; because we lived in the slums; because we were poor, conservative and religious. Poverty was not our only problem; they continuously attacked our values, beliefs and what we consider sacred. They excluded us from notions such as rights, law, freedom, justice and equality. They could not tolerate our ideas, politics and our way of life.