Exactly one year ago this month, I attended and photographed my first #BlackLivesMatter event and this image (left) has not left my mind since. This is a photograph of a student at my University. Christian Brothers University, who on that day (December 9, 2014) participated in an event called #WalkOutToChalkOut. Students that day on our campus walked out of their classrooms at noon, proceeded to the quad, and laid down inside of chalk outlines to participate in a symbolic “die-in” signifying what was at that time an only nascent (White) public awareness of the scope and gravity of anti-black police violence in this country. I still can’t quite describe the strange combination of horror and pride, anger and motivation, despair and inspiration that I felt that day.
This image has never left me, continues to haunt me, every single day that I walk into my classroom.
Whatever else may be said about “kids today”– and in the lat several months there has been a lot of incredibly prejudicial, monumentally uninformed and stupid things said– I’m utterly convinced that what ought noti be be said about them is that they do not was quite literally humbled and silenced on that day last December. Witnessing my students– 18 to 25 year olds, for goodness sake!— lie down inside of death-chalk outlines, or draw those same death-chalk outlines around their friends, in what I’m sure we all hoped was a metaphorical enactment of solidarity, but which was in reality for them, regrettably and statistically, a very real possibility.