more info

In English class this year I was asked to answer this question:

If you could change one thing about where you live, what would it be and why?

After handing out the five-hundredth bottle of water, I moved the empty coolers across the street, back into my house, and caught up with the rest of the protesters in the march for Black Lives Matter down the street of West Paces Road to the Governor’s mansion. I saw the faces of my closest friends, students I know from other schools, and my past teachers. These faces made me even more determined to be a catalyst for change in Atlanta, due to their safety being in danger from the problems of racial injustice.

It’s truly heartbreaking when some of my closest black friends tell me how terrified they are of getting pulled over while driving - a daily and stress-free activity for me. I am fearful of what could happen to them. I have tried to do my best to contribute to the change, but it’s a daunting prospect when this problem is so rooted in Atlanta’s history. An example is MARTA, Atlanta’s public transportation system. Public transit does not run through Cobb County, an area adjacent to the heart of the city of Atlanta, because of the 1980s-era fear that the trains would bring crime and “undesirable elements” into almost exclusively white communities. It has been forty years and still, nothing has changed.

Atlanta thinks of itself like a phoenix, rising from the flames of the Civil War, but it still has not risen above the ashes of deeply embedded racial inequities.

This creative writing prompt assignment is what actually inspired me to create this organization with a design logo, designed wristbands, and designed posters.