Diane Guerrero is an actress, activist and author whom you may recognize from Jane the Virgin and Orange is the New Black. She is extremely active on social media where she talks to her more than one million followers about the causes she’s passionate about. Guerrero appreciates that we’re living in a time where we can have our news known and opinions heard so swiftly via networks like Twitter and Facebook.
The 29-year-old woke up on Friday morning devastated over the news that five police officers had been killed by a sniper in Dallas, the same week two men were also killed by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota. So she took to Twitter to talk about why #BlackLivesMatter and why #PoliceLivesMatter as well. In an interview with Variety Latino, Guerrero spoke about why it’s important for change to happen now and what she hopes people learn from watching Orange is the New Black.
“We all need to be awake, be active and use our voices so we can reach some sort of change”, she said. “Right now, social media is so powerful, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. Post after post, people are joining forces and really speaking their minds. It’s been something that has been good to see.”
Rallies have been popping up all over the U.S. in the aftermath of the Dallas shooting. The suspect, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, was killed by a police robot bomb after negotiations failed. He told police he was angry about the fatal shootings of two black men by police officers. He said he wanted to kill white people.
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“First and foremost, we want to take from our mentors,” Guerrero said about fighting back peacefully. “The people who have come before us and shared a wealth of knowledge: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, you have all these people who died for an amazing cause, which is equality and justice for all. It is just so sad that we are in 2016 and we’re seeing some of the same things playing out. So there hasn’t been much change. We don’t want any more people dying senselessly.”
Throughout season four of the hit Netlix series —which follows the lives of women locked up in a women’s prison— there was a similar theme. Guards at the Lichfield prison abused their power by committing horrible acts on the prisoners that resulted in the death of one inmate and a protest that will change the dynamic in the prison for the foreseeable future. Guerrero hopes the show inspires conversations that will change the system.
“There is clearly a problem in the police force and the way CO’s [correction officers] treat inmates,” she expressed passionately. “And it could be any sort of abuse. Maybe not how you saw it on Orange is the New Black but there is certainly still mental abuse, overstepping of power in different ways. I just wish to see a more rigorous process in order to get these job.”
Guerrero added, “Being a police officer, being a CO is an important job and it should only be taken by the most empathetic, most reasonable people out there. Mental health checks, background checks, and sensitivity training are so important. They should only have the best people working these jobs because those are the people that are going to raise people up and help make them become better people. So if you have CO’s and cops that are bad, that’s really not going to do well for the rest of us —the citizens of this country.”
Season 4 of Orange is the New Black is currently streaming in its entirety on Netflix.
