Raeha Khazanchi, 11Rochester, NY We Can’t Breathe Raeha Khazanchi, 11 We can’t breathe Why can’t we breathe? Because he can’t breathe Why can’t he breathe? Because his breath was stolen from his body We are not treated equally Why are we not treated equally? Because he was not treated equally Why was he not treated equally? Because this a world where your color of skin matters We are hungry Why are we hungry? Because he is hungry What are we and him hungry for? We and him are hungry for justice.
George Floyd
A Child’s View of the Death of George Floyd, by Amara, 9
A Child’s View of the Death of George Floyd Amara DeLong, 9 New Orleans, LA Last year, my four-year-old neighbor dressed up as a police officer for Halloween. He was very proud of his costume! Little did he know what was actually happening in the world. Two days ago, my family and I learned about the death of George Floyd. We watched the video, on CNN, of a police officer putting his knee on the forty-six-year-old man’s neck, even as he pleaded for the officer to get off. At school, we are taught to respect police officers. We are taught that they protect our community. We are also taught that racism ended with the civil rights movement. We learn about Harriet Tubman’s fight against slavery, and Rosa Parks’s and Martin Luther King’s fight against segregation. We learn about Ida B. Wells’s fight against lynching. Yet, we don’t learn about the racism present today. The evils that Ida B. Wells fought against are still happening. George Floyd was lynched, and he was lynched by police officers. These are the people who have a responsibility to protect communities, not destroy them. I want to grow up in a country with a greater sense of justice. I want a country that achieves the goals of our activists and real heroes. I hope that, one day, children in America can wear a police officer costume with actual pride.
