By Imani Thomas
Since the beginning of time, young people have been at the forefront of making a difference. In 2021 they are continuing to do just that. The Tallahassee Dream Defenders recently held a rally about House Bill 1. Over 300 young people were on the zoom to hear what the bill stands for and what they can do to stop the bill from passing. The event started with a series of questions to the audience to see how informed they were with the bill.
The Defenders teamed up with March For Our Lives, an organization that formed after the terrible Parkland School shooting. Chistopher Zoeller, a member of March For Our Lives, started the conversation with a great point. It was aimed squarely at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School incident.
“There has been 1.8 billion COVID cases in the state of Florida and instead of our Governor focusing on that, he focused on giving people like us and people on the streets felony record,” Christopher said.
The main point of the event was to explain how serious this bill is to organizations’ ability to stop direct action. Dream Defender Jonel Edwards spoke on when they first started off nine years ago and if this bill would be enacted then, hundreds of people would have been called rioters and possible arrested, carrying the charge on their criminal record.
“This bill would have given the frat house that yelled racial slurs at us while we marched, the permission to run us over,” Edward said.
This bill wouldn’t have gotten Dream Defenders justice or a chance to have a safer Florida. “We’re not going to let them pass this bill quietly or pretend that this is about safety,”
Maxwell Frost an organizer for March for Our Lives was next up on the panel. Frost was arrested and taken to jail during the summer Black Lives Matter Protest in Orlando, Florida
. “I think back to late July early August when I was arrested if this bill wasn’t place, I will still be in jail about three weeks,” Frost said. For walking down, the road for Black Lives.
Another way to silence people and give police more power to abuse their power. At the end of the rally the panelist lead everyone through a “Twitter Action”. Where they made everyone tweet a graphic with the Hashtag #STOPDCR and to direct it to Governor DeSantis. The next meeting will be February 23rd.
Zaria Hill the Vice President of FAMU Dream Defenders expressed how she thought the event went.
“This was different because we are used to being on the ground getting their message across. His bill defeats the purpose of us,” said Hill. “I feel like the event went well and that we got a chance to inform others of something that is kept quiet from the public so we’re going to keep doing what we have to do to let everyone know about this bill.” If you missed the rally, itcan be found on the Dream defenders’ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DreamDefenders
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