“I can’t breathe” were the last words from Eric Garner, Eric Arreola, George Floyd, and many more before they were killed in a chokehold all at different times by a police officer in New York City. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag has been running the internet lately after George Zimmerman shot an African-American teenager who was unarmed, Trayvon Martin in Florida, February 2012. Protests started to increase on June 6, 2020, when 5 hundred thousand people showed up around 550 places in the United States, and protest still continues today. In 2014, this became more worldwide when two unarmed African-American men (Eric Garner and Michael Brown) were shot and killed by police officers (Daniel Pantaleo and Darren Wilson). These police officers were not formally charged with a crime.

I want things to change and sometimes I have hope that things will be different. There are endless questions on how to be a better anti-racist. So many people are standing back and watching. Just imagine one of these people being really close to you and someone else was just to stand back and watch, the reason they were killed was because of the color of their skin. 

The movement for BLM is to fight for freedom. From the Black Lives Matter website, “Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement advocating for non-violent civil disobedience in protest against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people.” Therefore, people are doing protests and riots and that is their way of fighting for their freedom. I don’t agree with violence but I don’t agree with the way people of color get treated differently. This problem has tried to be changed respectfully before and nothing changed, so I’m happy people are making an effort to change the world around.