Hey there fellow bloggers! I have a story to tell you guys, so… a few weeks ago, I was in the AMS Nest attending an event that the Indonesian Student Association at UBC held, the event was an eating competition. We made so much noise until there were some complaints from people who also had an event in the AMS Nest. The event was Black Lives Matter, they told us to keep our voice down because they said their event is a sad event. We all had no idea what Black Lives Matter was so we didn’t bother to keep our voice down.

But this week, the CAP program had another amazing joint lecture which we talked about Black Lives Matter. So Basically Black Lives Matter is an organization working for the existence of black life and their intention is to build the Black liberation movement, they emphasis that this is not just a moment or like what Dr. Luger said, not just a hash tag, but a movement.

One of the TAs shared a story about a black guy named John Crawford III which I found very interesting and shocking. So basically, he went to Walmart and stopped by the toy aisle and played with a toy gun while talking on his phone, then someone called 911 and he was shot dead. I was shaking my head the whole time and wondering would it be different if he was white? would people still call the police or just simply ignore him?

Another interesting thing that someone brought up during the lecture was it should be #AllLivesMatter instead of only #BlackLivesMatter since everyone is equal and not only we need to solve issues regarding black people but regarding everyone in the society. Because as a global citizens, not only we should have tolerance to one another, we also should treat everyone equally since we are all the same and have the same responsibilities.

– Inneke Soeyanto