Artwork by Isabelle Prunier. Isabelle is involved in the Art Against Atrocities initiative, which seeks to foster awareness and action to address mass violence worldwide through the arts. Check out Instagram for more: @art_against_atrocities
On a Monday evening several weeks ago, Together We Remember’s Youth Action Network came together to discuss recent events happening in our country and what we can do as young people to make a difference. The Youth Action Network is a community of youth from all over the United States with a passion for raising awareness on a variety of social issues through virtual events and conversation, along with other practices. We were inspired by TWR’s mission to turn remembrance into action to end identity-based violence and combined it with our own skills and interest to create the idea of writing collaborative blog posts highlighting voices of our community members. Every month, we will discuss a different question pertaining to current events.
For our inaugural blog post, we were inspired to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement. Living through both a pandemic and crucial time in our country regarding the lives of Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), it is important that our generation takes a stand and bridges the gap between awareness and action. This month’s question prompt is the following:
How has the Black Lives Matter movement impacted you as a young person? What does the movement mean to you and how has it inspired you to take action?
Additionally, we want to encourage a powerful discussion among members of the TWR community. If you feel inspired by our dialogue and want to submit your own response, please email it to info@togetherweremember.org and we may add it to this blog post!
Ananya Gera, 16, Terre Haute
For the past few months, the United States has been going through a historic time, in regards to both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. I have seen how our country has been taken by storm, and how that has led so many members of society, including myself, to reevaluate the lense through which we see the world and how it has targeted Black people. This movement has forced us to look deeper inside ourselves and our households to reassess the detrimental stereotypes we help perpetuate on a daily basis. As a member of the South Asian community, I have educated myself on different practices that are harmful to Black people, the most prevalent example being colorism, which has been ingrained in South Asian culture ever since South Asia was colonized. It is important to step back and reexamine our personal rhetoric and have difficult conversations with ourselves and others, so we can step forward together. We have to realize that America was built on systems designed to serve white people, and only when we acknowledge that can we start to rebuild those systems to benefit everybody. Non-Black POCs, like myself, have to educate ourselves about our own history, including how the Civil Rights Movement caused the United States to allow people from all Asian countries to immigrate here and how upholding the Model Minority Myth has only harmed Black people and benefitted no one. I have learned that the best way to support our Black brothers and sisters is to learn their history through reading informative books and articles, watching documentaries and movies depicting certain aspects of our society such as the prison system, and most importantly, creating spaces for BIPOC to be seen, heard, and supported. It is our job as young people to be the best allies we can possibly be, bypassing performative allyship and using any platform we have to spread awareness. By signing petitions, contacting representatives, and constantly educating ourselves, we can help to stop the cycle of injustice.
Dorene Hantzis, 16 | Terre Haute, Indiana
The Black Lives Matter movement has been a recurring theme in my life. I’ve attended events, kept up with the news, and mourned the loss of POC lives since I was very young. Now, I am so incredibly grateful to see the dedication of young people to the movement. My generation has started a social media revolution that has been sweeping through the nation and around the world. I see my peers, teachers, and family bringing social injustice and systemic racism to light in an awe-inspiring and phenomenal way.
Cassidy Laffey, 16 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Even though I know very few people of color due to where I live, I think it is very important to support such a powerful and meaningful movement. The amount of prejudice and violence in the world today is astronomical, yet up until recently, most people were ignorant to it. I know that I personally was. There are so many hard conversations that are avoided, and that’s why I think this movement is so important. Only after these conversations are had can we, as a group, make changes. BLM forces those conversations and in turn allows us to all look for a solution.
I don’t want to live in a world where Black people need to fear those who vow to protect them. I don’t want to live in a world where justice is not met for victims of murder. I don’t want to live in a world where hate and injustice are ignored, and even sometimes praised. For all these reasons, I choose to stand with the BLM movement and become the best ally I can be.
A lot of the time, I feel powerless when it comes to things bigger than myself because of my age, but young people have a stronger voice than I ever knew. With the power of social media, we are finally starting to see the reforms that will truly change this country. The youth must continue to be the voice that challenges the older ways and demand that change be made. By signing petitions, spreading true information, and spreading love, justice will be found.
Ishreet Lehal, 17 | Terre Haute, Indiana
These past few weeks I have seen the tides turn in the states like never before. The sheer momentum that has built up these past weeks has led me to question many aspects of our society and education system. As a person of color who has seen intergenerational trauma in my homeland, I find it very hard to see my Black brothers and sisters go through these horrendous acts of injustice. For more than 400 years, Black people in our society have fallen victim to the harsh realities of racism. We, as Americans, have continuously failed the Black community. Recently, the death of George Floyd became the catalyst for a worldwide movement to end the injustice that Black people face on a daily basis. Young people have shown their power these past weeks as they have changed the course of the movement forever. However, we can not let the momentum from this movement die down. This is the time for young people to change the narratives we teach in schools and society forever. As a young person, I have done a lot of learning and unlearning these past few weeks and I have realized that we need to support our Black community by understanding their history and the truth behind many events that shaped America’s history. Moreover, this movement means that we must also look within ourselves and our households to start facilitating difficult conversations around embedded racism in our communities. Being a part of the South Asian community, I have seen, first hand, the comments made in my community that cause the cycle of injustice to continue. The effects of colonization on the South Asian community have caused there to be inherent racism and colorism to be ingrained into our minds. Now is the time to change these narratives within your own communities in order to create change as a collective America. Most importantly, we need to realize that there is a system that has been created for centuries that oppresses people who are not white. People fear the backlash they may receive for speaking out against injustice. This fear is what has caused many to remain silent, causing the vicious cycle of injustice to continue. We can not allow this cycle to continue any longer, and that is why we must pledge to amplify the voices of our Black brothers and sisters while simultaneously listening intently, to ensure that we learn their side of the story now and become the change that stops the history of oppression from continuing.
Jocelyn Paulin, 16 | Pennsylvania
As a person of youth, I believe that it starts with us when making the future a better place for generations to come. If we start righting our beliefs and correcting the hate in the world now, our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on may be able to grow up in a world without prejudice and hate. In the present, we have seen an overwhelming and powerful movement of Black Lives Matter after the death of George Floyd. I find it almost saddening that it took so long for this urge for change in racial stereotypes and prejudices to occur. I often wonder, “Why must it take the death of an innocent man for a movement to occur?” As a person of color myself, my desire for change in this moment has never been so present. As a person of youth, my desire for change resonates as a way to change future mindsets. In spite of the overdue wait for this movement, we youth must take advantage of the opportunity we have been given to rid our free nation of the racial discriminations and stereotypes that still linger. To continue the movement, we must recognize and acknowledge the hardships that our Black brothers and sisters have carried for decades, spread awareness of instances of racial injustice, and, above all, never forget the lives that have been lost in this effort for change. As youth, we can spread awareness through our schools; we can fundraise, write in the school newsletters, create flyers, and speak out in one united effort to end racial injustice. I take my role in society seriously knowing that if I stay silent now, I may never be heard again.
Sahana Rao, 16 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
To me, Black Lives Matter is a struggle that symbolizes a movement against systematic discrimination of all types. Yes, it started specifically to fight the treatment of Black people by police, but since then it has grown into a movement that resonates with all young people who have a strong dislike for discrimination or racism. Most young people in this country just want to get along with each other instead of causing chaos just because of someone's skin color or ethnicity. As a girl, I would like to be treated equally and with respect when I grow up as well. BLM is just an extension of all the movements that occurred before that: Civil Rights Movement, Equal Pay Act, Women's Rights, LGBTQ+, etc. All human beings are born equal, so our society and nation should treat us equally with respect. There should not be any room for implicit or explicit discrimination or oppression in a cultured society.
Young people can become a part of the groups or organizations that stand up for human rights, discrimination, hate, etc., which are operated locally at schools or colleges and actively participate in changing their environment. If there aren't any youth groups around them that they can access, they could start one with a purpose of educating and spreading the word about anti-discrimination and hate. They can also come up with specific actions like identifying any practices or rules in their environment which may be contributing to systemic racism and try to come up with initiatives to remove those practices/rules.
Harsha Sankaran | Frisco, Texas
A picture does indeed speak a thousand words. As our nation echoed with powerful cries of ‘Black Lives Matter!’, I found myself unable to meaningfully express the realities of what I felt. So I turned to paper and pencil, here’s what came out of it:
As old as the concept is, we humans still haven’t learned how to love properly. How to love without exclusivity, and prejudice. For hearts which thrive on love, it seems ironic, but alas this entire creation is one of irony. I hope that this summer is indeed the beginning of colossal change, that we learn to lead and love with everyone’s needs in mind. A nation is naught without its people, a flag, meaningless unless we attach meaning to it. Our beautiful flag has long stood for freedom, equality; our land long praised as “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Let’s be brave for one another, acknowledge our own mistakes and fix them. The piece above is done with colored pencil and micron lining, the quote is a Sanskrit subhāśitam, moral proverb, it says "Consideration of one as 'mine' & others as 'another's' occurs only to the narrow minded. To the broad-minded, the whole world is our own family." One more time: the whole world is our own family.
Allison Weiner, 17 | Terre Haute, Indiana
The Black Lives Matter movement is important to me as a young person because BIPOC and those who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community have been fighting the same civil rights battle since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s and even before that, and young people are the future. It’s absurd that we’re sitting here in 2020 and we’re still preaching the same civil rights issues that Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and it’s about time that BIPOC receive the rights that they deserve. It’s very important that young people get involved and create change because we are the people who will be shaping this country, along with society, in years to come. This country is in our hands. It is very important for young people to not only protest and educate the people around them, but also call and email their local senators, and most importantly, go out and vote! If you’re eighteen or older, then voting is the best way to let your voice be heard so we can implement change not only at the local level, but also at the state and federal levels too!