“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.” -Malcolm X

This is the quote we started our session off with today. For our session this week, we focused on historical movements as well as present-day movements. We wanted to focus on this since it represents the fight towards racial justice and equity. To start off the session, we used an activity for the teens to list all of the historical movements they remember. In doing so, they left out some movements. We wanted to raise the point of why some movements are remembered while others are lost. To bounce these ideas, we split the teens into breakout rooms for them to talk about movements in response to George Floyd and Rodney King. The teens discussed how these black men were victims of police brutality and even though there is a long depth of time in between the two events, they are disturbingly similar.

Katherine and I wrapped up today’s session by introducing the the Five D’s of bystander intervention.  A large part of acting for change is intervening when there is an inappropriate incident. We discuss the numerous methods to intervene, but obviously based on the situation.

Link for 5 D’s: https://www.ihollaback.org/bystander-resources/