In This World Can’t Tear Me Down, Sarah, Zero’s friend who always makes the right choice, gives a public statement that disappoints Zero.
The arrival of 35 migrants in Zero’s neighborhood causes problems. The Nazis claim that the migrants are making their neighborhood unsafe and want to get rid of the migrant shelter.
Then there are those, like Zero and his friends, who do not want to send the migrants away. Zero is already disturbed by the Nazis’ anti-migrant posters, Cesare joining the Nazis, and seeing the people who tried to defend the migrants in Dicksville being portrayed as violent disruptors.
So when he sees Sarah, Zero’s friend who always shows him the right path and who can do no wrong, telling the media that the shelter should be closed if that is what is needed to be done to keep the school near the shelter running, Zero is deeply hurt and disappointed.
The girl who could not move forward
Sarah worked hard for years, first at the university and then to get her PhD. Everyone around her told her that she can do anything, but Sarah only wanted to teach children. She helped all her friends, and while they all moved forward in their lives, she did not.
Instead of pursuing her dream, Sarah was stuck in a corporate job that she did not enjoy at all. After spending 10 years with no prospects, Sarah finally got the chance to be a teacher at the school near the shelter.
However, she is told that the students have stopped attending school because their parents do not think it is safe for them to go there, as it is near the migrant shelter. The school might close if things do not change.
Sarah thinks that she is finally moving forward and cannot afford to go back to square one if the school closes down. This convinces her that it would be better for the shelter to be moved somewhere else, and that is why she chooses to give that statement to the media.
Exposing the truth
On the day of the city council’s meeting in front of the shelter, the Nazis and their opponents clash. It is Sarah who stops the riot briefly when she gets the two groups to listen to her.
She makes the people see that while they are fighting amongst themselves, the journalists are recording everything to make their neighborhood look bad and enjoying the show.
She admits that for a while, even she started believing that the shelter was the cause of the school shutting down because it was the easiest thing to believe. However, it is not the truth, and she is here to show people the harsh reality.
She asks Domenica, a janitor who has worked at the school for decades, to talk about the real problem. Domenica points out that the people stopped sending their children to this school long before the migrants arrived.
The condition of the school’s infrastructure is so poor that parents have started sending their children to better schools, and the authorities are still not doing anything to make things better.
Although Sarah’s efforts only stop the riot for the moment, they make Sarah’s friends respect her again. Sarah loses her way briefly, but in the end, she chooses to do the right thing.
Also Read: The migrant problem in This World Can’t Tear Me Down explained