Days after the grand jury decision in Fergson, demonstrations continue across the county, including one in Wichita.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!” students chanted as they marched across the lawn at Wichita East High School.
“I’m really thankful that these protests have been going on to show people care and that they want change,” said student Parnia Razi. “It means a lot to me that people are standing up and that people are doing something about it because obviously nothing is going to change if people don’t step up and take responsibility and take care of each other.”
A few dozen teenagers held signs, reading “black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace.”
Moments later, the students staged a die-in at 12:01 p.m., when Michael Brown was shot and killed. The students lied down for 4.5 minutes to represent the 4.5 hours Brown’s body was on the ground.
Students hope the August shooting is something that will be discussed in classrooms today and remembered well into the future, said Lydia Mamalis, a Wichita East student. She co-organized the event with fellow student Sneha Verma.
“Everybody tends to forget about it really really fast, and I feel Lydia and I are both at an age where these things are going to follow us, and this is something that might be in a history book,” Verma said. “But, it’s going to be something that everybody kind of brushes over and it’s not going to be something that gets a lot of focus and it should. This is something that we need to be looking at for years and years to come.”