Powerful protest speech by girl (11)
At just 11 Naomi Wadler is wise beyond her years – and she showed it in her powerful speech about violence against black girls and women at a march for gun control in America
IT TOOK less than four minutes for her to become one of the faces of a mass movement and an internet sensation. She’s just 11 years old but she’s already being marked for greatness – and some have even gone so far as to say she could become the president one day if she carries on like this. And watching footage of Naomi Wadler addressing a crowd of hundreds of thousands, it’s not hard to see why.
The Grade 5 learner’s short, eloquent speech at the recent March for Our Lives rally in Washington, DC was one of the highlights of a day marked by tears and defiance.
Naomi was by no means the only speaker – one young person after another commanded the microphone to get their point across.
But she was one of the most memorable, raising awareness of the plight of African-American girls and women in a country where minority groups are often overlooked.
The rally – one of the biggest youth protests on American soil since the Viet- nam War – was held to demand authorities do something about gun control.
This came in the wake of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead and mobilised hundreds of thousands of schoolkids across America to walk out of their classrooms and take a stand against how easy it is to buy guns in the country.
Naomi was worried her speech would be off-topic but her fears were allayed when she was told all the learners would be speaking about their own experiences.
So she went ahead, talking about how gun violence involving people “who look like me” hadn’t drawn the same outrage, sympathy or media coverage.
“People have said I’m too young to have these thoughts on my own,” she said. “People have said I’m a tool of some nameless adult. It’s not true. My friends and I might still be 11 and we might still be in elementary school but we know. We know life isn’t equal for everyone and we know what’s right and wrong. We know we have seven short years until we too have the right to vote.
“I urge everyone here and everyone who hears my voice to join me in telling the stories that aren’t told. To honour the girls and women of colour who are murdered at disproportionate rates in this nation.”
NAOMI was told about the Parkland shooting by her mother, Julie Wadler, who had a connection to the tragedy. Jaime Guttenberg (14), one of the victims of the massacre, was the daughter of one of Julie’s high-school friends.
Naomi is from Alexandria in Virginia, 1 600km away from the horror of Parkland, but she started thinking about what she could do to make a difference.
She read everything she could about the shooting and the planned protests. Then she and her best friend, Carter Anderson, starting wondering why “younger kids shouldn’t take part too”.
The pair organised a walkout at their primary school, George Mason Elementary, a 20-minute drive from Washington, DC. Their walkout wasn’t 17 minutes
long like those at many other schools to honour the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting – it was 18 minutes long.
The extra minute was in memory of Courtlin Arrington (17), a black girl who was gunned down at her Alabama high school on 7 March.
Unlike the Florida shooting, her killing received far less media attention.
Naomi and Carter’s walkout was met with resistance, with school authorities saying it would be unsafe for kids to leave the premises during the day.
Naomi’s response? “How will we be safe in our own classrooms in the world we live in now when it’s okay for someone to walk into a store with an expired ID and buy an assault rifle?”
About 60 learners joined the walkout, carrying signs and laying down on the ground in silence outside their school as their parents watched.
During her speech Naomi explained the extra minute in honour of Courtlin.
“I think that when specifically African-American women are shot and killed their names aren’t remembered. So I thought it would be important to add an extra minute.”
A study last year found black women were more likely to be shot to death in America compared to women of other racial groups.
“It’s subconsciously embedded in people’s minds that somebody with a darker complexion is worth less and their life isn’t as valuable as [that of] a white girl or a white man,” Naomi said.
THE preteen, who was born in Ethiopia to a white mom and black dad, attends a school where nearly 60% of kids are white, around 30% are Hispanic and about 6% are black. Her daughter is “an aware kid”, Julie told the Washington Post. “She wants to know why on the news they identify black people as black but not white people as white. She wants to know why Trayvon Martin was shot [by a neighbourhood watch volunteer in 2012]. She wants to know why Philando Castile was shot [by a cop in 2016]. Her father is black and she wants to know if she has to worry about him being stopped and killed,” Julie added.
Naomi’s parents were planning their spring holiday break when the March for Our Lives organisers contacted them and asked if Naomi would be one of their speakers – they’d noticed her after her school walkout went viral.
Julie agreed and watched proudly as her daughter captivated the crowds – including a clutch of celebrities who attended the march.
Actor George Clooney called Naomi before the march to tell her how impressed he was by an interview she’d given after her walkout. “He said he loved how I spoke so eloquently and the message I was trying to get across,” Naomi said.
She admitted later she’d been panicky about the speech, despite appearing so poised. “I tend to be a pretty catastrophic thinker when it comes to these things,” she said. “I think, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die’. I need a life-saving serum.”
After the speech she hugged her mother and joined her school friends to watch the rest of the rally from the audience.
Later that day, when they arrived home, there was a note on their front door from a friend saying she’d done a great job and her teachers emailed her mom, praising her speech.
Naomi, who doesn’t have any social media accounts, was casually told by her mom she’d gotten a shout-out on Instagram from Oscar winner and Black Panther star Lupita Nyong’o.
“She screamed so loud I thought I lost my hearing for a month,” Julie said.
Naomi has managed to keep most of the attention her speech received at arm’s length, she told The Washington Post. “I haven’t been googling myself, so I haven’t seen everything,” she said the day after her words went global. “My speech might not have a giant impact on society, but I hope black girls and women realise there’s a growing value for them.”
‘People have said I’m too young to have these thoughts on my own’