Protesters held umbrellas in one hand, and shined their phones’ flashlights in the other. Rain beat against the ground in time with their chants. One at a time, members of a huddle called out the names of murdered or missing black men and women, including those who once belonged to their own small town.
“We are dying,” one student protester said, desperate to be heard while illuminated by the lights left on after a somber moment of silence.
Mississippi Senator’s ‘Public Hanging’ Remark Draws Rebuke
On Sunday evening, Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF) students in Chicago held a protest in response to a series of racial incidents in the school’s halls and classrooms. After chanting outside, the group moved their efforts in, strategically disrupting a panel discussion for America to Me, a Starz documentary that centers around race, equity and racial parity at OPRF. The documentary follows the real-life stories of both students and staff, as they navigate the school, whose wide achievement gap was made evident in 2015 when white students averaged an ACT composite score of 27.4 and black students averaged a 19.1 score, the Chicago Tribune reports.
