"We Are All Socially Responsible For Making Our Communities A Better Place To Live"

The city of Lichfield has recently held its own protest in support of Black Lives Matter. Wie-Men Ho was immensely proud of his hometown for this.

“Lichfield is a predominantly white community. Did that matter? No. it showed that as a community the city was prepared to stand up and voice it’s support and raise awareness.”

A lot of the protests around this time were getting out of hand with violence and being portrayed in the media as so, however, the protest that Wie-Men attended was quite the opposite.

“The protest was peaceful, very well attended and gained local press coverage.”

While the press coverage around the protests was seemingly positive, the comments under the posts and articles were anything but. Wie-Men was disappointed to see the ‘outdated comments’ about the Lichfield protest.

“The majority of protesters were probably young white kids from privileged middle class backgrounds. So what? Those “young white kids” weren’t pretending to be black kids who had suffered racial prejudice. Those “young white kids” will be inheriting what society is currently dealing with now. This is what made the protest more impressive in my opinion. It was those young, white privileged kids who took the initiative and not the adults of the city.”

Wie-Men Ho’s community in Lichfield is very diverse, but he still feels that the population is somewhat responsible for making the world a better and more inclusive place.

“That’s why Black Lives (should) Matter more than they have. We’re all socially responsible for making our local communities a better place to live in and just because we don’t have as many ethnic minorities around does that mean we shouldn’t care or shouldn’t try to make a difference? The real answer for most of us is quite simple and self-centred. It’s because it normally doesn’t affect us so why should we care? All I know is that we should all be encouraged to call out any injustices we see rather than ignore them.”

Not all of the protests that happened at that time got out of hand with violence, in fact very few did. The way that the protests were portrayed on social and mainstream media is just one point of view.

The cause brought communities together and raised injustices that we should all be aware of. Black Lives Matter now and forever.