18-year-old Mikiiya Foster organized a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in her small hometown of Simi Valley, bringing in thousands of people despite receiving threats of violence from social media trolls and a request from a local elected official to reconsider her plan to hold the march.
An estimated 2,000 people showed up for the June 6 protest, with Foster telling E!, “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, in the beginning of the protest, I honestly couldn’t see how far back it went because I was up near Chase Bank, so I could only see that small corner. That itself I was just like, ‘Oh my God. What is happening? Did I do this? How did I?’
Though she had no prior experience in community organizing, the teenager felt inspired to act after seeing people take action across the country, and has planned another Foster announced her next event, a “peaceful march” to be held on June 19 (aka Juneteenth, the day slavery finally ended in the United States).
“We still have to be careful because of COVID-19, but we’re going to do something because this movement is far from done,” she told E!.
