text: People are asking, why we’re marching and what a black man’s death in the US has to do with us in Denmark?
  To those of you, I would like to ask you, what does anything that happens in the world then have to do with us in Denmark?
  What does people dying anywhere in the world have to do with us?
  How about when wildfire and tsunamis hit parts of the world?
  Isn’t it human nature to grieve them and to aid them in any way we can?
  According to the telegraph the #JeSuisCharlie was tweeted more than 6.500 times a minute at it's peak, when terror struck the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris! That is all well and great but …. is sympathy and freedom of speech only reserved for people who kick downwards at people already laying down?
  How about the fact that our country is using millions of taxpayer's money on a man who on a weekly basis harass black and brown people outside of their homes, with the police next to him – protecting him and willing to shoot for him?
  I would like for all of you to now close your eyes and think for a minute
  that there was a black man travelling up and down this country, every week for years to harass people in their residential areas. Imagine that he would burn holy books or even at times come with them with foul things on them. Imagine then that he was being protected with YOUR taxpayer’s money. It is hard to imagine that, is it not? Because that would never be the case. That is the differences how we are systematically treated differently. No one should be enabled to act in horrific, racist and discriminatory ways, but I am only highlighting to you – that when we black and brown people hear that "Vi er lige overfor loven" (that we’re equal in the eyes of the law) – that is not our experience. That is not what we see.
  For me as a black woman and for many of the Afro-Danes living in Denmark and black people all over the world, George Floyds death and particularly the way which he was murdered, is a metaphor and in some cases a direct representative for how the world treats us and has been treating black people for centuries.
  Here in Denmark, many of us are alive but we cannot breath.
  I personally cannot breathe when our government is refusing to renew 800 of my Somali people living in DK for years with their kids and sending them back to a country with no hope and security for their lives.
  We cannot breathe at the lack of jobs – even though we often are more qualified than our white peers who are offered the jobs.
  We cannot breath when you hire a white Dane for a job that is about us and is supposed to benefit black and brown people – just because Søren and Sanne have taken a few courses on “Cultural understanding and ethnicity” at RUC.
  We cannot breath at our jobs where we are often belittled, micro-managed and stressed from the unnecessary challenges and microaggressions we are subjected to from our colleagues and our bosses.
  We cannot breath at our schools and universities where we are often isolated and where teachers have to beg our student peers to choose us for group projects – often black and brown students work alone because no one wants to be in a study group with them.
  We cannot breath because our young children are bullied in school every day and often by their town teachers who don’t believe in them or understand their needs.
  We cannot breath as long as Ellebæk, Sjælsmark and Kærshovedgård has black and brown people locked up and forgotten about.
  We cannot breath when you have labelled our homes and neighborhoods as ghettos.
  We cannot breath because our young boys and men are harassed by police on a daily basis and stopped, to be searched for no reason other than their skin color.
  We cannot breath because you have failed to look around at your work places and educational institutions where we’re excluded and absent from, and you have not demanded change, you have not demanded diversity and inclusion. In fact, I am sure that is something some of you haven’t even noticed or thought about? We’re here, you see us every day, but we’re rarely ever invited to have a seat at the table anywhere – why? Because of systematic racism and discrimination.
  Finally, we cannot breath because when we tell you all this, you don’t believe us.
  I will like to end with a quote from Audre Lord:
  "Without community, there is no liberation … but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist."
  I am just here to remind you, black lives matter – and like my 11 year old daughter said to me the other day: only when black lives matter, will all lives matter.
  