{"id":11963,"date":"2020-11-04T08:24:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T13:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=11963"},"modified":"2023-08-04T09:26:56","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T13:26:56","slug":"words-and-deeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/words-and-deeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Words and Deeds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A \u2019Liah Moore \u201922, a communications major and forward on the women\u2019s soccer team, has gotten used to public speaking over the last few years. But as she held a police microphone outside the Lakewood Municipal Building this summer and began to address the crowd, \u201cthis one really hit me hard,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moore and others from the local NAACP chapter had just finished marching through the streets of Lakewood, New Jersey, side by side with local police officers, in protest of George Floyd\u2019s killing and ongoing police brutality. When it was her turn to talk, Moore looked into the crowd and saw a woman crying. In that moment, she felt the pain of not just one person, but everyone there. \u201cYou look around, and it\u2019s a crowd of people who are hurt, broken\u2014people who haven\u2019t been heard,\u201d Moore says now. \u201cIt hit me: I\u2019m not just speaking for myself. I\u2019m speaking for the whole crowd and anyone who is listening. That\u2019s a real honor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through tears of her own, Moore introduced herself and began: \u201cBecause I am Black,\u201d she said, \u201cme talking with the right etiquette means talking like a white person.\u201d She discussed wage gaps, broken families, and ignorance and hatred. \u201cLet\u2019s not come together for just some protest, but stick together to make a change and a different narrative for us,\u201d she added. \u201cIf we want change, we must be the change. If we want peace, we must demonstrate peace. If we want justice, we must raise our voices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we want change, we must be the change. If we want peace, we must demonstrate peace. If we want justice, we must raise our voices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Moore has been involved with the Ocean County\/Lakewood Chapter of the NAACP\u2019s Youth and College Division since she was 10 but only began speaking at events in the past few years. As the Black Lives Matter movement swelled this summer, and as she watched professional athletes speak out and protest, Moore committed to stepping up her own activism too\u2014both at Monmouth and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She figured the campus athletic community, where she already has close ties, was a good place to start. Moore loves her teammates and coach, but even in that supportive environment, there has been discomfort and pain: the time a group of boys cheering on an opposing team called her \u201cmonkey\u201d; all the parties she skipped, afraid that if the cops came, she\u2019d be first on their radar as the only Black student there; the feeling of being Black in a locker room where the majority of the team is white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moore believes that change begins with simply sharing her perspective and these stories. That\u2019s why she participated in a \u201cHawk Talk\u201d Black Lives Matter panel discussion this summer and why she is working to foster more conversations this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She already reached out to her soccer teammates this summer and set up a video call in which they discussed George Floyd\u2019s killing and some of her own experiences as a Black woman. Her coach and teammates have agreed to continue these conversations in person, and Moore plans to speak with other Hawks athletics teams too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe time is now,\u201d says Moore. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason to hold my tongue and not try to make a difference, especially with what\u2019s going on in our country and especially with sports today. Athletes in the NBA, MLS, NFL\u2014they\u2019re all doing something. And everything they\u2019re doing, we can do as well. I\u2019m just trying to figure out the best approach so I can use my voice to bring awareness and make a change in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Athlete A\u2019Liah Moore is using her platform to advocate and campaign for racial equity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":11975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":61,\"y\":22}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-play"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Athletics, Play","issue":"Fall 2020","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11963"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11984,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11963\/revisions\/11984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}