Wow, it’s kind of difficult to choose one experience that has stood out to me during this program. Now that I am coming to the end of my time within DCBRP I have had a lot of time to reflect. Thinking back I’ve decided that I would write about the black lives matter protest at Campus Martius. It was a pretty run of the mill protest with people sharing their stories and catchy jingles shouted out by the crowd. The thing really stood out to me was how many people in DCBRP actually went, and their attitudes at the protest.
I have been to huge protest and protest consisting of around 5 people and I have never been with a group of people that were so open to the messages they were hearing coming from the main speakers mega phone. Everyone was listening and trying to learn about how truly hard it is to be black and America. Nobody who went got defensive or even weird. This made me really proud of the people I lived with. We were all able to enjoy the protest together and even have a little bit of fun.
Afterwards when we came back to Towers and debriefed, we all had an honest conversation about how we felt the protest impacted us. The fact that we had spent a month and a half together really gave some people the opportunity to open up and share how they really felt. No one got offended or defensive, and everybody listened to what others had to say. It was truly a beautiful moment that I won’t forget any time soon.
