Jill Epperson
Staying Quiet Isn’t Going to Change Anything
I arrive at Jill’s home and she immediately welcomes my family and I with a warm smile and snacks for the kids. The children delightfully grab the snacks from the table and run off to eat and play with Nathan, Jill and Geoff’s 9 year old son. We gather around the kitchen table and sip on lemonade as we catch up. It’s been weeks since we’ve seen one another and over a month since the Orland Park protest. We discuss everything from family road trips to the upcoming presidential election. This summer has been a whirlwind physically and emotionally. The nation is still in an uproar and racial tensions have yet to cease. As we wrap up our conversation we shift to the project. Our gathering is to interview Jill and her family about the protest; she bravely agrees to go first. We head out to the patio and Geoff sets up his camera while I set up my recording device. Jill grabs her pet iguania and positions him on her shoulder like a newborn being burped. She gently strokes her reptilian companion and is ready to begin.
We begin our session discussing the idea behind the protest. “It was an idea that my son had. We watch the news with him (and) we inform him of things that are going on in the world. And you know, he was watching some of the protests on the news (and) he was upset with them not being peaceful…He said to me, ‘you know mommy, I wish I could go march, but I want to do it peaceful’. This is not the first protest or first march that he has been involved with, so he knows what they are and how they can be peaceful. And that’s kind of how it all started.” With the intentions of a peaceful protest I wondered if Jill felt nervous prior to the demonstration. “Honestly, I didn’t, until we started walking on the corner.” Jill smiles and begins to laugh. I stretch out an “ou” and laugh too because I felt the same way. “I was real excited, I was kind of shaking a little bit with excitement and then as we were standing on the corner, I started to get a little nervous, you know? Maybe it was the first car that drove by and someone made a negative comment or something. My son saw it and we had to explain that. So, there was some nervousness. But, up to it? No, I didn’t feel any of that. I was excited, really excited!”
I slightly shift our conversation to the global pandemic. Presently, the world has been affected by the COVID-19 virus. Large scale gatherings have ceased until we can lessen the spread. This includes schools, places of worship, amusement parks, and restaurants to name a few. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), highly recommends people socially distance themselves, wear masks in public and refrain from gathering. Naturally, protests cause individuals to congregate. I wondered if Jill felt ambivalent about protesting in the midst of a global pandemic. “I wasn’t. I felt like this (protest) is too important...and we wore masks. We had our hand sanitizer, we weren’t touching other people. I wasn’t worried about that at all.”
For Jill, the main concern was “getting the message across” and “supporting things that need to change.” One change is adopting policies that reduce police force; overuse of force essentially killed George Floyd. I asked Jill to share a moment during the protest that was most memorable and she discussed the moment when we honored Mr. Floyd. “When we all went down on one knee for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, I had tears in my eyes. You know, just doing that for that long of time and thinking, Oh my God, this man is suffering...and dying and crying. That really hit me hard.” Knowing Mr. Floyd’s murder was due to him being Black led me to ask Jill about race. “Have you had the conversation with your son about race?” Nodding her head she replies, “um hum”. “From an early age we taught him that everybody is equal. He doesn’t look at race...he looks at people's insides.” She provides an example by sharing a story. “I remember when he was little, reading him a book. His (own) teacher was Black, in the book (she) was White. He would point (at) the teacher, ‘that’s my teacher’, because that was a teacher. So he never saw that (race). From the beginning, we taught him that everyone is the same and equal...just treat everybody equal and we’ve made sure of that — that was most important.”
As we come to a close I ask Jill if she has any advice she would like to share. Without hesitation she replied, “Show your support. Just staying quiet isn’t going to change anything. The other thing that I think is (really) important is to teach young children about what’s going on.” Jill had an encounter with younger family members who were unaware of why people were protesting. “I was shocked, absolutely shocked. We had to have a discussion, we had to talk about it.”
This is the beginning. When we teach our children to respect everyone, stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed and speak out against injustice we create a world where all people can be equal.
Copyright © 2022 Aisha Scott. All Rights Reserved.