Former first lady Michelle Obama encouraged recent graduates to embrace their anger and channel it in order to change history.
Obama released a video Sunday for 2020 graduates and addressed the lockdowns designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus and the protests in response to the death of George Floyd while he was in police custody.
“Over these past couple of months, our foundation has been shaken — not just by a pandemic that stole too many of our loved ones, upended our daily lives, and sent tens of millions into unemployment, but also by the rumbling of the age-old fault lines that our country was built on: the lines of race and power that are now, once again, so nakedly exposed for all of us to grapple with,” she said.
“So, if any of you are scared, or confused, or angry, or just plain overwhelmed by it all, if you feel like you’re searching for a lifeline just to steady yourself, you are not alone,” she said, adding that she feels the same.
Obama addressed people who might feel “invisible” and told them that their experiences and dreams for the future matter.
“So, don’t ever, ever let anyone tell you that you’re too angry or that you ‘should keep your mouth shut,’” she said.
“Dr. King was angry. Sojourner Truth was angry. Lucretia Mott, Cesar Chavez, the folks at Stonewall — they were all angry. But those folks were also driven by compassion, by principle — by hope,” Obama said.
She said later in her address, “Graduates, anger is a powerful force. It can be a useful force. But left on its own, it will only corrode and destroy and sow chaos — on the inside and out. But when anger is focused, when it’s channeled into something more — that is the stuff that changes history.”
Protests have broken out in the wake of Floyd’s death on Memorial Day. Floyd, an unarmed black man, was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. Related video footage shows Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes before dying.
Chauvin has been fired from the force and charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Three other officers involved with the death, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, have also been fired and charged with aiding and abetting murder.
People enraged by Floyd's death have protested in nearly every major city across the country to denounce police brutality and perceived systemic racism within police departments. Though many protests have been peaceful, riots have also broken out, resulting in looting, the destruction of property, and assaults on police officers.