Mia Spears, 16, was scrolling through social media last week, watching demonstrations against police brutality and the killing of George Floyd unfold across the nation, when she saw a classmate post about wanting to attend a protest — but there was not one scheduled in Baton Rouge.
That gave Spears, who just finished her sophomore year at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, an idea. She grabbed her mother's computer, reached out to two of her friends, and together, they began researching how to organize a protest.
They looked into city-parish permitting laws, mapped out a route, and after connecting with Mayor Sharon Weston Broome's office and Police Chief Murphy Paul, blasted out posters for their "Teenagers Take Charge March" across Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. They were unsure if the event would even take off.
It did.
On Sunday, more than a thousand protesters poured into Galvez Plaza and peacefully marched behind the trio of teenagers through streets of downtown Baton Rouge to the foot of the State Capitol building. Some protests in other cities have turned violent or turned into looting; Sunday's march was peaceful from start to finish.
"I was so proud of our community," said Colleen Temple, 17, who, alongside Noah Hawkins, 16, organized the protest with Spears. "We are the next doctors, teachers, lawyers and politicians. We need to start getting active now."
The team of highschoolers doesn't plan to stop at the march. They are calling for changes locally to the board overseeing police hiring and misconduct complaints, more support of black-owned businesses and changes to the parish jail.
St. George organizers don't understand why protests against police brutality have arrived at their doorstep.
They are planning a tele-town hall for candidates seeking office during the July 11 elections, which include judges and some Democratic Party positions, to lay out their agenda for the black community. That event is tentatively slated to occur on June 11.
They also met with Mayor Broome, who said she was impressed by how specific and attainable the students' goals were — though she cautioned they wouldn't be achieved overnight.
"I am a baby boomer and my goal has always been to mentor and to recognize those who are coming up behind me," Broome said. "We're seeing the next generation of leaders emerge through this tragedy."
For advice on organizing the event, the trio of teenagers turned to Myra Richardson, 21, who knew the "pitfalls and troubles" they might face. Richardson rallied her own peers as a teenager in protest after Alton Sterling was killed by law enforcement in 2016.
"This crop of youth are committed to moving our community forward," Richardson said. "They have this kinetic energy. They are a force to be reckoned with."
She said their pleas for justice on the steps of the statehouse "came from a genuine place of hurt with a pre-existing system."
During the protest, Hawkins, who recently completed his sophomore year at BRHS and performs in the Baton Rouge Ballet Theater, read out a poem he had written, his eyes welling as the crowd fell silent to listen.
"Don't get me wrong, I am proud of being who I am, but why or how am I supposed to be proud of something that is constantly ridiculed and targeted daily?" he said.
Colleen Temple, a volleyball player who just finished her junior year at LSU Lab School, said she's grown exhausted with the constant string of hashtags that emerge on social media every time another black person is killed by a law enforcement officer: "I'm tired of it. Silence is violence."
Protesters gathered on Siegen Lane again Tuesday evening to speak out against police brutality, chanting loudly with voices already hoarse fro…
Mia Spears, also a volleyball player, began her speech by hearkening back to January 1865, when, after centuries of bondage, molestation and abuse, African-Americans were finally freed from slavery.
Still, she said, the oppression had not ended there.
“Even though these slaves were free, the shackles were still on their ankles. The shackles of racism held them down and told them because they were black they will always be treated as unequal in America,” Spears told the crowd.
The trio of teenagers each said that with limited lessons on African American history and the Civil Rights Movement in school, they turned to extracurricular sources to learn more about the history of their ancestors' struggle.
Spears said her introduction came from watching Roots, the 1977 miniseries that follows an African American family throughout history. And Hawkins said he recently started watching interviews with Malcolm X on YouTube to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement.
"What he was saying then is what we're saying now," Hawkins said. "It's baffling to see that we're still voicing the same concerns."
Temple, who was just a pre-teen when Alton Sterling was killed, said she rarely had discussions in school about the events of 2016 that so traumatized the Baton Rouge community.
"How could this happen and no teachers say anything? No students said anything. Everyone was silent. That’s wrong," said Temple, who noted she attended a predominantly white high school and middle school.
They called on the state legislature to recognize Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States, as a state holiday.
The day before the march, Spears she said she received a strange message on Instagram of a black cartoon character that appeared to mock Floyd's death. And shortly before the march began, her mother's car was broken into. She said she almost didn't participate.
Hawkins also said he received derogatory comments in the days before the march and noted that he still thinks much of Baton Rouge is oblivious to the racism and pain that black Americans face regularly.
The trio, however, hopes to move forward and form a new nonprofit organization for local teenagers to continue their activism and community service in Baton Rouge.
"We want to use this momentum from this protest to really make a change," Hawkins said.
