Altering the Tide

Eleven. I was eleven, when Trayvon Martin was brutually slain. I remember thinking why? Why was he murdered when he didn’t do anything wrong. It broke my heart. It shattered my perspective of the world. I thought the world was so much better than it was then even though I had expereienced my own trials and heart breaks. I had experienced racism, but I had never really processed and labeled it as such. The shooting of Trayvon Martin was a turning point in my life and believes. It was something that started a process that is irreversible. I began to educate myself. I didn’t grow my passion for social justice overnight. It was birthed from inquiry. The senseless killing of Trayvon Martin sparked something in me. I needed to know how something so unjust could happen and how the killer could get away with it. I read. I read and I read. Articles,books, news. I need to understand what this was. Why that happened? In that process, I learned about more than I had bargained for. I learned about income inequality, wage pay gap, lack of girl’s education, human trafficking, systemic racism. I am stilling learning about all of these things. The world is so much more a darker place than it was to me at eleven, but I still have hope. Hope that one day things will change. When I heard that Philando Castille had not received justice, it took me back to that feeling I felt at eleven that sparked the inner activist in me. The feelings that this world is so unjust and unfair and an anger and anger to chance things. I will never forget them. I will also not forget the other victims of unfair police brutality and racism. They must be remembered. We cannot let their deaths be in vain. We must work together to change a system that allows for murders and rapists to go free and others to be sentenced years for smoking marijuana. Seventeen, I am seventeen. And I still am thinking why about the death of an innocent person. We need to, we have to, we must alter the tide of police brutality that has been sweeping over the black community for decades.