More than 100 students from the graduating class at North Vancouver’s Ecole Windsor Secondary took a knee to show solidarity with protesters battling systemic racism during a group photo shoot earlier this month.
On June 7 the grads gathered together for the first time since COVID-19 restrictions came into place, uniting once more for a cap toss photo shoot that saw them standing in physically distanced rows on the school’s football field.
When everyone was in place, the students dropped to a knee together for a full minute.
“It felt deeply moving, as we are a diverse class,” Maddie Townsend, one of the students who organized the effort, said in a note to the North Shore News. “We have many faiths, cultures and races amongst us, so not only did it feel like we were standing together for things going on in the world, but also together for each other.”
The gesture came together as Townsend and some friends and family members talked through the protests they were seeing across the United States, Canada and around the world in response to the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was killed in Minneapolis, Minn., during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. A white police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe.”
Taking a knee in protest against police brutality and racism began in the National Football League in 2016 after San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat and later knelt during the U.S. national anthem before a game.
Several Windsor grads were keen to join Black Lives Matter protests in Vancouver but were dissuaded from doing so by their families, largely due to provincial health warnings and restrictions against large gatherings still in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Townsend.
She mentioned the idea of taking a knee to a few of her graduating friends. The idea quickly gained acceptance and was passed to the rest of the class. About two-thirds of the school’s grads were there for the photo shoot, with many of the missing grads being international students who had already gone home and were unable to return under current COVID-19 restrictions.
The class went quiet when it came time to take a knee.
“On the field, all the students were invited to join if they felt they wanted to, and everyone just kneeled,” said Townsend. “It lasted about a minute. Some closed their eyes, some bowed their heads but everyone kneeled and everyone took that moment quite seriously.”
Townsend’s mother Heidi Holborn-Townsend was the lead organizer of the grad photo shoot and she had discussed the kneel down with Maddie, but not many other parents knew what was about to happen as they stood at a distance watching the grads set up for the shot.
“They all just had that moment together in unity, and it was just really beautiful,” Heidi said. “They didn’t want to tell the parents that they were doing it, they just wanted it to be their thing.”
The group gesture provided an important collective moment for grads who have been deprived of the typical trappings of graduation by restrictions due to COVID-19, said Heidi, adding that official school grad ceremonies were sadly, but necessarily, brief and fleeting this year.
“We dropped our kids off at a building, they went through a door by themselves, went into a room by themselves with a couple of staff, came out of the building, and got in the car and we left. That was grad.”
It was a powerful moment to see the grads kneel down as a group, Heidi said.
“It’s settling in that they’re not really high school students anymore,” she said. “I suddenly saw adults. … I’m really proud of them.”
Maddie said she was partly inspired by a social justice course she took in her Grade 12 year (“shoutout to Mr. Myers making us think about the world around us”). Protesting in the streets is important, but real change also needs to come from personal choices we make every day, she said.
“The more we all talked about it, I realized that it really starts with each of us and is something we have to carry forward with us personally into our everyday lives. It is a good thing for us to be conscious of moving forward into our adulthood.”
