George Floyd’s death just scrapes the surface of murders caused by police brutality, yet it was the force that tipped the iceberg and created a revolution. While it is extremely heartbreaking to hear about deaths caused by police brutality on the news, it is even more horrifying to watch the life of a man slip away due to the misconduct of a police officer and his cowardly coworkers. Even though it was the unfortunate death of George Floyd that initiated this global movement, we must not forget the names of others who died because of the prejudice of police officers.

Through this podcast, it is not surprising how prevalent systemic racism is worldwide. As a world, we have shown that racism is embedded deep into the cores of our societies. However, I find it truly inspiring when people join forces and rise together. The Maori, a group of discriminated people in New Zealand, have shown their solidarity through their haka. The haka is an emotional and powerful ancient dance that was the war-cry of their ancestors to show their courage. Now, the Maori people use it to show a sense of community and strength. When they performed the haka at the Black Lives Matter movement, it was their way of saying that they see their struggles as a community and they are there to show respect and solidarity. Seeing people of all different backgrounds recognize the struggles of African Americans in America and unite in the fight against it is truly inspiring. Aside from the fact that other discriminated groups from across the world can relate to the suffering of African Americans, social media helped to catapult the awareness of Black Lives Matter. The news media has a tendency to skew the views on the movement by enforcing their own bias. For example, rather than focusing on peaceful protests, some news outlets have led Americans to believe that all protestors are rioters and looters. Social media websites have done a great job of fighting against these biases and showing footage that a lot of news outlets will not show. Thus, through social media, people worldwide have gained access to actual footage which, in turn, effectively mobilized the movement.  

Although protests fighting against climate change have been occurring, the efforts of Greta Thunberg in the past few years have revolutionized and revitalized the fight among school children worldwide. In 2018, Thunberg would skip school so that she could stand outside of the Swedish parliament with a sign that read “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (School strike for climate). Thunberg wanted to pressure the parliament to hold climate change to a higher standard and call for action to fight it. In return, Thunberg encouraged many other students to organize school climate strikes in the communities around her. Eventually, this movement reached America and I remember that my high school was one of the schools that organized a strike for climate change. Students and teachers flocked from my school and to the streets to pressure local authorities to take action. While Thunberg was mainly stationed in Sweden, her efforts spread like wildfire across the world and influenced the creation of movements coined “The Greta Effect.” This truly shows that any effort has the potential to incite major change.