Barack Obamaon Wednesday told youth and community leaders from around the U.S. that their work this past year has given him hope of improving racial and social equality.
The former president, 59, spoke with the activists during a virtual forum through his My Brother’s Keeper advocacy group, launched in 2014 with the mission “to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world.”
Wednesday afternoon’s virtual event featured panel discussions focused on ways communities can combat injustices. The forum was scheduled around the one-year anniversary ofGeorge Floyd’s murder, which sparked global protests throughout 2020.
“We are here in part to commemorate the anniversary of one of the most heartbreaking and vivid reminders of the injustices that are occurring in this country every single day,” Obama said during his opening address.
Barack Obama.Lynne Sladky/AP/Shutterstock
During the forum, Obama participated in discussions with leaders around the country, including Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka and Alicia Garza, the founder of the Black Futures Lab.
Obama took questions and asked, himself, what he and other older leaders can do to help support youth leaders around the country.
Obama told PEOPLE last year that his daughters —Sasha, 19, andMalia, 22 — had also participated in the protests.
They felt “the need to participate,” he said.
“They didn’t do it in a way where they were looking for limelight,” he said. “They were very much in organizer mode.”
“I could not have been prouder of them,” he added.
“But the last year has also given us reasons to hope,” he said. “Today, more people in more places are seeing the world more clearly than they did a year ago. It’s a tribute to all those who decided that this time would be different—and that they, in their own ways, would help make it different.”
Obama said that “when injustice runs deep, progress takes time” and that “if we can turn words into action and action into meaningful reform, we will, in the words of James Baldwin, “cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”
In her own statement this week, Mrs. Obama wrote on Twitter that she was “thinking … of his daughter Gianna, and all the young people out there who have seen so much, but refuse to give up hope.”
“All of us have a role to play to hold our leaders accountable and speak out about injustice. Let’s make sure that ‘Daddy changed the world’ isn’t a fleeting moment online, but a lasting change across the country,” she wrote.
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source: people.com
