I have been reading so many articles and watching videos about the Black Lives Matter movement. Being a black woman myself, everything that has happened has really hurt me deeply.

I remember around this time last year, I was away in Wisconsin with my s.o at the time. We woke up one day to the news about Sandra Bland’s death and how she was taken to jail for absolutely no reason and later found out that she was killed by the police. At one point during that week, there were so many photos going around of her and articles that I couldn’t stop reading. My s.o and I decided to go into town to get food and on the way back, we were stopped by the police. In that moment my heart felt like it had completely popped out of my chest and onto the car floor, still beating but at 1000 beats per minute. I was so scared and had no idea what was going to happen to me. The cop stopped us because my s.o was speeding, but all I could think was that if my s.o wasn't white, I could’ve been dead.

Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter

There is this huge ‘debate’ if you want to call it that, about why we aren’t saying All Lives Matter instead of Black Lives Matter. I think this is absolutely ridiculous because this movement isn’t saying that your life DOESN’T mater. We all see that there is something happening in this world and that maybe not all, but many police are purposefully targeting black people. Black Lives Matter is a movement to get people to notice that a white person's life is not more valuable than a black person's and that we want to be treated the same. We want to be valued and respected. We are tired of being looked down on. And we are sick of always having the short end of the stick. No matter what we do, we are always frowned upon by someone. This movement is to show the world that us black people want justice and freedom just like white people have. That we aren’t afraid anymore and you aren’t going to continue to threaten or kill our people.

You (cops, KKK, and other racists) are more afraid of us than we are afraid of you!

Why are you afraid of us? Because you grew up thinking that black people would take something away from you? For years and years black people were always told that we would never be that, we would never have that, and we could never do what the white person could do. So, how is it that you can even be afraid of a black person when your racist parents raised you to think that you will always be better than black people?

Or is it just ignorance?

Education is the key to everything you do. Here, I am referring to cops, especially. Today…and probably since forever, cops are just given a gun after a couple weeks without proper training and thrown out into the world and told to make the world a ‘safe’ place. Without being told what to do in certain situations and how to simply not kill someone, leaves you uneducated about how you are suppose to do your job. We say that kids in low-income areas like Chicago need more teachers and aren’t receiving the education they need, but maybe we should start with cops so they can actually do their job?

In all, violence is never the answer to anything and us, black people, can only do so much. It’s time for other people to start making a difference. Black people need to stop explaining things to other people because we have been trying to explain ourselves for years. It is time for people to step up, become educated about the subject, and do something. If all lives matter and mean something to you, then show it.

This movement makes me even more proud to be a black woman and makes me have so much more respect towards all black people. You really don’t know what one goes through unless you have walked a day in their shoes. Living in this world is really hard, but with movements like these makes you feel like your life is so much more purposeful and valued. No matter how many days go by that another black death was shown on the news, you should continue trying to change the world for the better.