On June 12th, 2020, the center of Pleasant Ridge was filled with voices of children to make signs, talk with each other and act in response to the current events. A few individuals of the Pleasant Ridge community had an idea that organically came together and over 450 people attended. This event was not started by any particular school or organization. There were people in attendance from four different Pleasant Ridge Schools, PRM, Nativity, TCP and Woodford and even some kids from KY! To quote the event organizers, “The goal of this children’s march is to amplify the voices of our future. We want to give the kids of our community an opportunity to speak out and be together during this time. Because of the ongoing pandemic, children have been at home, processing current events alone. We’d like to offer the opportunity for them to be among peers, parents and teachers who can help them understand what is going on. And who will LISTEN to them.”
As people arrived, they could get a balloon, a water, make a sign and then walk around to different signed stations with questions to begin conversations, like what is justice? The interns of Community Happens Here handed out ice cream to the children.
Standing with the community, the children were given a chance to step to the front and stand before the crowd and speak! On their signs and into the megaphone they spoke these words:
Black Lives Matter
Everyone can be a Scientist
Stop the Violence, Black Lives Matter, we need peace
Listen to Kids
Know Justice, Know Peace
My friends lives matter
Let’s Bee Together
Let’s Play Legos Together
Stop being unfair to people
Together we will fight for equal rights
If only our pain bothered you as much as our protests
Be Kind to Others
No Justice, no Peace
Peace, Love, Joy
We Must Live Together as Brothers or Perish as fools
Freedom and Equal Rights for Black People
No One is Free Until We are All Free
Protect Black Lives, Lift Up Black Voices
Let Us Not Repeat the Past, BLM
Liberty and Just for All
I Care
Black People, we love you
My brothers are black and they’re awesome
We support our black friends
We Want People to be Fair and Kind
Black Lives Count
Follow the American Dream, It started in 1776, so lets not stop it now, democracy is the way to go
Never Give up, Just Keep Going
The Pleasant Ridge Children’s March began at 6pm and lined much of the .8 mile block around the heart of Pleasant Ridge. As they marched, some folks came out on their front doors to stand and wave with their support. The streets were filled with honking and shouts from cars passing by! Thank you to all who supported and showed up to amplify the voices of the children in their words – in the larger perspective of current events this gives us a picture of beautiful bittersweet sorrow and joy, and above all, hope.
To keep these conversations going in the fall, books and money were collected at the march to purchase books addressing modern day social justice, structural inequalities and anti-racism. These books will be purchased at a Cincinnati black-owned bookstore and directly donated. At the children’s march, $147 in donations were collected for Black Lives Matter Global Foundation! Eight books were donated to the book drive and an additional $65 was raised over the $500 collected on line for the book drive benefiting PRM teachers’ classroom libraries. You can still contribute to this book drive fund! The GoFundMe will stay open until Tuesday, when the order of books will be placed to donate to PRM teachers. Click here to donate: https://gf.me/u/x8baig
Check out the event page on Facebook for more resources and support! Click here.
Thank you to Annie Esposito, Philip Esposito, Sarah Lofquist, Alice Connor and the numerous others who came together to make this event a success and will continue to support these beginnings!
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