“Our Voices Matter! Students from Allentown, Emmaus and
Parkland School District speak their truths!”
Do you think the Black Lives Matter movement is just a trend, and what are you as youth leaders going to do to insure that this work continues?
(min. 1:05:05)
- I’m a black woman in America, and I have to face all these problems and injustices on a daily basis.
- I make sure I’m always vigorous in educating and holding people accountable for what they are saying.
- We’re the future, we have to have our heads on straight.
- Use your voice.
- Address the things that you hear but maybe usually don’t talk about.
- I’ve been very timid in the past . . . because of the backlash.
- People fall into performative activism and get on the moral high ground . . . and the feel like I did so much.
- I am actually in the process of starting a podcast . . . for girls my age who deal with micro-aggressions.
- . . . clout-chasing off of our lives, our struggle, and it’s not a joke.
- We’re not going to stop fighting . . .
- When it comes to protecting us . . . y’all have a problem.
- Just because you do black people things doesn’t mean you’re not racist.
- I will go to every protest, to every town hall or zoom . . .
- This is what I do for my people, and until there is change, I won’t stop doing it.
- Black Lives Matter . . . it’s an awakening.
- Racism . . . I live it every day.
- It’s just hard to go through life knowing you have a target on your back every single day, the way you were born, the way God created you to be.
- I find it disturbing that racism is being treated like some new revelation.
- Why did it have to reach this point, why did so many people have to die?
- Because you put a commercial on tv . . . that’s going to make things better? No.
- If we got out of that mentality, and we actually came together . . . do you realize how many things we would change?
- [the video ends with a student recounting a bad experience with a teacher and with another directing remarks to the Allentown police chief].
Tip o’ the hat to Ce-Ce Gerlach for arranging this gathering.