By Greg Fry

Poll results

Will anti-racism protests result in societal change?

Jun 12, 2020 | 3:07 PM

PRINCE GEORGE — The reaction to the killing of George Floyd was swift and sparked worldwide outrage, including in Prince George last week with a massive turnout outside City Hall and hundreds more a day later next to Mr. PG. But will the outcry to Floyd’s death and other social injustices last?

We posed that question on both our Facebook page and our website, ckpgtoday.ca. With close to 1,200 responses, 60 per cent said no and 40 per cent yes.

Those numbers weren’t surprising to Aaron Larsen, both a teacher at Nusdeh Yoh and a graduate history student at UNBC who notes that number is reflective of people who are cautious to expect change is coming. Despite that he still believe change is possible.

“It might be small steps at first but I do firmly believe that we have an opportunity for immense levels of change.”

He say a lot of that boils down to education though.

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“For example I work as a teacher and working as a teacher I’ve had numerous students not necessarily change their mind on topics that they were very set in their ways about but they’ve at least gained other perspectives.

“And the more that you educate yourselves on issues the more likely you are to not necessarily change your mind yet but have a wider variety of perspectives being brought before you and hopefully allowing for people to empathize with people who are different from themselves.”

Another person with an interesting perspective is Lola Casinel, who’s both an Indigenous woman and a member of the LGBTQ community.

“So, my take on it is definitely that this is something that has been needed to be talked about for quite some time. I’m glad that we can address Black Lives Matters and Indigenous Lives Matter, it’s nice to wrap those up. It’s nice to see some justice finally happening for some of these cases that were a little bit too complicated to figure out I guess.”

She also has a message for those skeptics out there who think everything will remain the same.

“I don’t think so. Like I said, your poll kind of speaks a little bit because you’ve got a 60 40 split. That 40 is starting to pick up from the 20 it was 10 years ago. So, I’m going to say to the naysayers, it’s just going to get bigger whether you like it or not.”