Sean Green is someone who understands the importance of using your voice when you feel like it doesn't matter. He is a college student in Manhattan studying music theater. He shares his voice not only through song on the stage, but through activism. A few months ago Sean started a organization called Bros For Equality, @brosforequality on Instagram, the goal of the organization is to get people to understand the power of their own voices and work towards change together. He is empowering to those around him and he stays true to the mission of his organization, most recently you might have seen in participating in the Women’s March in New York City. His Facebook page is consistently calling his friends to action and asking for people to pay attention, be vocal and work towards creating a better world for everyone. Reaching out to him, I wanted to get his opinion on the current political environment in the United States and what motivates him to stay positive and bettering the world. His answers are insightful, brave and show that there is still hope on the horizon from people who keep their hearts and minds open.

I sent him an onslaught of questions that he handled with grace and such enthusiasm that reading over his responses filled my heart with an overwhelming amount of light. The first question he was tasked with responding to was:

What Black History Month meant to him.

He gave a quick-witted response, “It means that instead of teaching me my history as part of one inclusive story of how this country came to be, the people above thought it was powerful to separate and condense part our history into it’s own little box and place it within the shortest month of the year. That’s what Black History Month means to me.” Understanding his response was blunt he laughs it off and gives a gentler response, discussing the importance of learning and exploring the importance of black culture. He smoothly handles the idea of the contrived, stereotyped version of black Americans and talks about how, “it is our duty, as black people, to create our culture from the ground up, connecting to our past, learning our history for ourselves, not waiting for the education system to get into gear, but discovering where we come from, who our ancestors were, in order to feel solid in where we are and where we are going.”

His voice is strong, backed by strong ideas it is hard to not sound confident and knowledgeable. He was hesitant to refer to himself as an activist, feeling the shoes were too big too fill. I asked him, when was the first moment you said to yourself, “I’m an activist”? He said, “When I was standing in front of about 50 people at a small demonstration I organized at my school after the death of Terrence Crutcher. I began to imagine what I could do with just a little more effort, and that’s when I knew this was something that was going to become a huge part of who I am, and it has.” He said it wasn’t easy to find his voice as an activist. He was unaware of the pressure, most of which he puts on himself, to do good for others. He says, “The word activist was so weighted because it made me think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks; people that I had always looked up to as true activists (also one of the only two black people we ever talked about during Black History Month as a kid). I wasn’t like them. They were legends.” Activism is not a competition. The goal of staying aware and using your time and your voice to work towards bettering the world should not come down to whether or not you were the best activist at the march or the rally. He was quick to connect his activism to his acting though, taking the competitive edge off of the table. Sean talked passionately about how actors tell stories and give themselves the chance to “mirror humanity” as he so clearly put it. “This was an empowering discovery for me and took the weight off of the work I was trying to do and freed my voice up to just be nothing more than a tool to express my beliefs. The rest of his interview was passionate, heart-filled and nothing short of inspirational. If you haven’t already decided to start working on your next march poster and activist chant, keep reading to understand what the world is like from the eyes of a woke, black man living in Brooklyn, NY. His words are filled with hope, a bit of sarcasm and a lot of knowledge about what is shaping the socio-political landscape of the United States right now.

What inspires you most to stay active and fight the good fight?

Biking over the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. Long winter runs from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Hot chocolate. Yoga. Good food. My beautiful friends. Good first dates. My mother. My father. My sister. My grandparents. Singing. Storytelling. Dancing. All of the things that bring me joy. All of the things that remind me that the world is beautiful. All of the things that could be compromised or taken away if we give power to hate and fascism. All of the things that my grandparents and ancestors fought for me to have the right to enjoy. That is what inspires me to stay active. That was is wakes me up out of bed on mornings where being black and woke feels like too heavy of a load. I get up, I thank my grandparents for raising two amazing human beings, that worked their asses off for their son and daughter to have the absolute best in life. I deserve to live in a world that provides for me the way my parents did. I as a black man in America, with resistance and protest running through my DNA, reserve the right to indulge in all that the world has to offer. I will continue actively fight for that right, because that’s the way my parents taught me to do so. My parents taught me that I can be or do anything that I put my mind to, and I refuse to believe that it was a lie.

Is it difficult when you feel like people “get tired” of hearing about issues that are important to you?

It is very difficult. I hate feeling like I am nagging and “making everything about race” as they say. But at this stage of my life, if people are “getting tired” of hearing about the things that are important to me, I’m finding new people. It’s that simple. I will only spend my time with people that will tell me that my life matters and that my opinions matter. At the same time, I want to have friends around me that keep me honest and sane. Like if I’m at a restaurant and the host says the wait is 30 minutes and I say “It’s because I’m black”, I want to have friends around me that say, “Listen, Sean……”. But seriously, it is all about balance and I try not to let the weight of the world sit heavy on my chest throughout all of my days. I am just trying to stay present moment to moment and if topics come up that a reoccurring, so be it, that’s just where my heart is right now.

Tell me about why you started “Bros for Equality”.

I started Bros for Equality because I was tired of going to Black Lives Matter rallies with predominantly women of color, gays, Transgendered people, white girls, Asians, Muslims, essentially everybody but the cisgendered white male. Especially when statistically speaking, those who are in power, have been in power, and have created the systems that we are actively trying to break, are cisgendered white men. I wanted a way to fight the fragility of masculinity, challenging and changing the notion of “locker room talk”, and get white men talking about race. Women have been fighting for equality for years. Black people have been fighting for equality for even longer. When have we ever seen straight white men disadvantaged and fighting for justice?

“All men are created equal”. This does not include people of color or women… When the constitution was written, only white men had their pens. Not one black man, not one woman. That is why we have Black Lives Matter and a Women’s March on Washington. That’s why we created Bros For Equality. My Bros team is full of women, gays, and of course, two fierce straight white men: Zack Zaromatidis & Charlie Franklin. Along with Erica Malachowski, Nessie Nankivell, and Cody Boehm, we are working together for change! We want advance our idea of what it means to be a man. We are creating spaces for white men to talk about and acknowledge their privilege and explore the possible guilt that may come along with it. It is hard to admit that you have privilege and dealing with that involves a heightened level self awareness and awareness of those around you. But that weight is nothing compared to the load women and people of color have been carrying for as long as we can remember. Essentially, we are trying to debunk the patriarchal hierarchy from within in by empowering more cisgendered white men to be active allies for black lives.

How do you feel the political landscape has changed for millennials? Do you feel like there is even more responsibility placed on them to make smart, educated choices when it comes to voting and politics?

I think it is the same as it has always been. It is always the young folks that stat the revolution. Millennials are just hippies all over again. If you go back and look at the freedom movements of the 60s and all the amazing social art that came out of those years, it is almost a direct parallel to what’s happening in our country right now. It’s simply just our turn. So yes, I believe it is our responsibility to make smart educated choices when it comes to voting and staying active, but it has always been our duty as citizens to fight for our rights and stand up for any level of injustices that occur on our soil. This is America. Freedom is part of our core. We just haven’t fully reached it yet.

What was it like to participate in the Women’s March?

I just couldn’t stop replaying all of the Black Lives Matter marches that I went to in my head. The police were so nice to us at the Women’s march; they guided us in the right direction, they nicely asked people to come down from the streetlights that they crawled upon. At the Black Lives Matter marches, there were vans of heavily armed policemen, waiting for you to do something illegal, so they could throw you in the back of a van and take you away. I also couldn’t help but wonder where all these white women were during the Black Lives Matter marches. I wanted to know if they were fighting for the poor people of color who used to live on their blocks before they moved in and the rent went up. I’m not saying this to generalize, I am actually saying this because that is why I go to black lives matter marches. I understand that I was privileged enough to grow up as a middle class black man, when most black men end up in the prison system. I understand that I am at a University getting a degree in Musical Theatre while the young black men around my neighborhood in Bedstuy are just begging for a way to stay alive. That’s what I’m thinking about while I’m marching and protesting. I’m thinking about the people that don’t have the luxury of even acknowledging politics because no matter who is president, the hood is still going to be the hood, and poverty is still going to be swept under the rug and blamed on those who are impoverished for not “doing enough”. I was just dying to know what was going through the minds of some of the women there. I just wanted to know if this was just part of what everyone else was doing or if they understood the intersectionality of all of the protests.

What hopes do you have for the future about the issues facing the country today?

In a perfect world, I will be able to raise a son without having to teach him how to survive as a black man in this country. I want to teach my future son how to make the world a better place, not teach him the steps to take so he won’t be seen as a threat if he were to get pulled over by the cops. I want the color of my skin to be celebrated, not feared. I want black men represented in the media as people, not as sex symbols, or symbols of violence and drugs. I want women to be celebrated as the mythical beings that bring life to this world. I want that magic to show up in equality in pay. I want my future daughters to know that they can explore their sexuality freely without someone deeming them unfit to be a woman. I want my daughter to feel empowered to make decisions regarding her body without feeling attached to the opinions of any man. I want to erase the idea that a woman needs a husband. So many of these notions come from outdated ideas of what it takes to survive. I have so much that I want to happen. I want America to truly be the place where people come to do and be whoever and whatever they want to be. Maybe that makes me a hippie. Maybe that makes me unrealistic. But I just don’t think that the fruits and gifts that the world has to offer should only be available to a select few. We all deserve to prosper. Our spirits are bigger and stronger than the systems and chains that hold us hostage to the illusion they try to upkeep. Religion is a choice, not an assignment; it has no place in the systems that regulate our daily lives. Race is outdated; we don’t need it to keep order anymore. Not to say that it was ever really keeping order as much as it was enabling racist ideology because we all know that racism existed before race, right? Race was a vehicle used to drive racism forward. What was I before someone decided that I was black? I was just a human. What was I before someone decided that because I have a penis, I am a man? A human. You see, once you realize that hate comes from labels but as human beings we love labels, you can start to liberate yourself from the boxes we have all been placed in. These are values that I fight fore.