Parents Who Protest
“Seize every opportunity. If you’re in the grocery store, if you’re at a family gathering, the books you choose for your children, the places you buy stuff from, where you get your gas, every choice you make. What are you feeding into? My common thread through everything I do is to stand up for justice.” |
Every parent and caregiver wants a bright future for their children. For some moms and dads, that means protesting against injustice. Since the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, protests for racial justice have happened across the country. Many parents, motivated by their experiences with racism or fears for their children, have become heavily involved in social action, whether they were activists before or not. Others, like the Wall of Moms protesters in Portland, Oregon, have volunteered to be human shields for Black activists facing police violence. In this article you will meet Julianne, an activist and mother in Portland who has become an outspoken advocate, organizer, and protester in recent months. You will also meet Syda, a community organizer in Chicago, Illinois, who has been participating in social action and protests for 25 years while raising her daughter. Julianne: Educate Yourself and Go Do the Work “George Floyd died on my birthday,” Julianne remembers. “I went to one of the local protests, and it ended up being one of the best days of my life because I never realized I had so many allies. But also it was a terrible day because riot police attacked the protesters.” “It lit a fire under me,” she says. “I’ve found my passion in this work.” Julianne, an independent Black organizer in Salem, Oregon, had some training through the labor movement before getting involved in racial justice. Now she is busy giving talks, speaking on panels, organizing conferences and marches, working with white ally groups like Showing Up for Racial Justice, and working for the removal of armed security guards who work in schools. Despite all of this work, she says she is not uniquely qualified to be an activist. “I’m just a person,” she says. “We can do this as normal people. You don’t need permission; you can decide you’re an activist and go do the work. We have a whole generation that is now activated.” Her children, a 14-year-old son and daughters who are 11 and 9, have been supportive and even attended some of the protests with her. Their conversations about current events and her advocacy frequently take place on drives together. Her son is dark-skinned like she is, and she has talked frankly with him about the danger of interactions with police. She has drilled him on how to respond to police. “If you’re approached by an officer, you ask them to call me right away. As a brown child, you can end up in juvenile detention, and I wouldn’t even be called until it was all over.” She shares custody of her children, so most of her advocacy work happens when her children are not with her. Because she knows they worry, she does not take risks with her safety at protests or give them unnecessary specifics. She admits there is a learning curve, both logistically and personally. Practical Tips from Julianne
Syda: Find Your Lane and Do What Your Heart Tells You Syda, a veteran activist in Chicago, says there are many ways to be involved in social change. There are the people at marches, she says, and “There are people who don’t talk to anyone, but they write a thousand letters. Everyone is needed in the arena to make a change. If we all have the same message things will change faster. I encourage everyone to find their lane and do what their heart tells them.” The child of Honduran and Colombian immigrants, Syda’s formative experience in activism happened in her Chicago public high school, when she and other students marched out of class and onto the street. She sheepishly admits she doesn’t recall why they were protesting, but “it felt good to be with a collection of people—they were my friends—just saying ‘this is what we believe!’” Syda’s daughter Kayla grew up watching Syda express her beliefs through different community actions, from art exhibits and dance performances to an annual service project for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. In college, Kayla petitioned her dance instructor to not schedule rehearsals on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. That was the norm, she says. “You serve on King Day.” Kayla wrote a letter on the importance of the day saying that without Dr. King a lot of her Black family members wouldn’t have been able to go to college or have the jobs they have. She also criticized the instructor for giving the dancers Halloween off but not Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. The instructor relented, apologized, and excused the dancers from rehearsal. Seize Every Opportunity Syda says these day-to-day opportunities to stand up for justice and fairness are as important as mass demonstrations. “Seize every opportunity,” she says. “If you’re in the grocery store, if you’re at a family gathering, the books you choose for your children, the places you buy stuff from, where you get your gas, every choice you make. What are you feeding into? My common thread through everything I do is to stand up for justice.” Although she and her husband and daughter do go out and protest, her focus is on long-term sustainability, including wellness and self-care for activists in the trenches. In the past year she founded Organic Oneness, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing racial and environmental injustice. “A lot of the natural stuff I do is to promote healing for social activists and the earth,” she says. “Everybody is interconnected.” That sense of connection is what keeps her going, and what she hopes will motivate others to get involved. “We have to work together on this and be in solidarity because we are all part of the same organism,” she says. “We have to see ourselves as one body. We should treat pain in a different community like a pain in our own limbs. The longer you leave an illness untreated, the worse it gets.” As a breast cancer survivor, she knows how dangerous it would be to ignore something just because we can’t see it. “What would have happened if I just ignored it? Nobody could see it. I looked normal. But what would have happened?” Practical Tips from Syda
Learn More Black Lives Matter Creighton, Allen, and Kivel, Paul, Helping Teens Stop Violence, Build Community and Stand for Justice, 2011 Gadzikowski, Ann, “How to Talk with Young Children About the George Floyd Protests,” 2020 Kendi, Ibram X., Stamped from the Beginning, 2016 Organic Oneness Project Implicit Saad, Layla F., Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor, 2020 The Wall of Moms |
This article originally appeared on Britannica Parent.