Ja’Liyah Huisar

Who Matters?

It’s an early evening in August and eight-year-old Ja’Liyah sits quietly on an adirondack chair shifting her gaze from the camera to the interviewer. She waits for the instructions to be read and offers a quick smile when the recording begins. As she listens to the instructions, she shoos away a bug and folds her arms. She looks comfortable but serious. Nodding in agreement to the directions, she begins the interview. 

Ja’Liyah recalls her mother encouraging her to attend the protest, “My mom wanted me to experience what it feels like.” Ja’Liyah’s mother attended a Black Lives Matter protest in early June and she wanted JaLiyah to have her own experience.  When asked how she felt about the protest she said, “I felt sort of proud...it was a free space to get things off your mind, or say anything you needed to say.” Even in the midst of feeling proud, Ja’Liyah admitted to feeling nervous at the onset of the protest, “I felt like people were going to start doing bad things to us, like start arresting us or something…”, images which she’s repeatedly seen on the news. In effort to process the racial climate of our nation Ja’Liyah turns to her mother for answers. “When I talk about it, she says it doesn’t matter what color skin your skin is, it just matters that you’re still alive.” Staying alive is the battle some Black people face when confronted by the police, one in which Breoanna Taylor and George Floyd lost. 

In recognition of their lives, protesters have chanted, Black Lives Matter. Ja’Liyah explained what this chant means to her, “It’s basically telling you that not only one skin color matters, but all the skin colors matter.” In the eyes of an eight-year-old, all lives should matter.

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