Multihyphenate Keke Palmer attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Hollywood on Tuesday, where she was recorded speaking calmly to a National Guardsman instructed to keep the peace.
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The actress, singer and talk show host encouraged the guardsman to walk with her and the other protesters and tried to explain that nothing bad is happening since they’re all joining together as Americans to disavow racism.
“You have to understand what’s going on,” she explains to the guardsman, who was armed with a weapon while Palmer spoke to him. “We have a president who’s trying to incite a race war. We need you. So march with us. March beside us. You get your people. March beside us. March beside us. Let the revolution be televised.”
When the guardsman explained he couldn’t leave his post, he did offer an alternative: he would march with the protesters down the street. When Palmer said she’d love for him to walk with them further than that, he passed on her plea. He also kneeled down on one knee a la Colin Kaepernick, as one person in the crowd suggested he does to show solidarity. However, Palmer says “that ain’t enough.”
In a video posted to her Instagram page earlier this week, Palmer got out a few thoughts about the protests and the public response to it. She says, “I’ve always been against violence, not wanting to be violence, because I don’t want violence to overtake my spirit, but now here I am, watching material things burn, and I feel a sense of comfort.”
“To those who may not be looking close enough, all they will see is looting or people who don’t really care about the movement or anarchy without a purpose,” she continues. “But what I see is society responding to the oppressor how the oppressor has responded to us…the establishment hasn’t shown respect to the people.”
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