A few people who were speaking out at yesterday’s peaceful protest in Kamloops in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement hope people keep fighting for equality in the weeks and months ahead.

Leslie Carty spoke to NL News and says the turnout yesterday despite the event being cancelled, shows that people are stepping up and showing up.

“It shows that change needs to come and [it is not enough] to say no I’m not racist, you need to be anti-racist, you need to be a voice to stop this, and [yesterday] really proved that,” he said. “I was impressed and I felt the love from everybody in the audience.”

Carty is confident that change is going to come in Canada and elsewhere, saying people at the rally didn’t just see a black man with dreadlocks, the him as a person.

“People are tired of what’s going on, and they are not going to put up with it anymore,” he noted. “Change is going to come, it has to, and if it doesn’t, I mean, this is not going to be the end of this today.”

Another speaker, Ellora Sundhu is asking people to volunteer with organizations advocating for a change, telling people to reach out to people of colour so they can tell their stories.

“This is a movement, this is a place in time. Our pain is not a hashtag. I just want to say for everyone on social media, as much as your powerful voices have touched me, we don’t need to know when you’ve know when you’ve muted, we don’t need to see hashtags that trend our pain, this is pain that we go through every day.”

Alisa Hopkins – who’s father is African-American and whose mother is French-Canadian – says she too was humbled by the crowd’s respect and attention.

“We all want the injustices to stop,” she said.

“I lived in America, I know what that is like [down there]. I am from a bi-racial family. I have seen all sides of this. I saw how they started at my parents when we lived there growing up.”

The Kamloops event was cancelled by organizers an hour before it was to happen, but people showed up anyway to protest injustices against people of colour that have been happening in both Canada and the United States for years.