The Summer of 2016 has seen several mass killings, a mud-slinging presidential election campaign and voter pessimism skyrocket. And that attitude is not just limited to adults.
WFSU asked a group of young ladies from the Oasis Center for Women and Girls to interview one another during a recent trip to the radio studios. They wrote their own questions, and understood they could ask each other anything. But one question stood out:
"What are you thoughts on what's currently going on in the world?"
"My thoughts are, I'm very disappointed because during the Orlando shooting, I didn't like that a lot. And in Turkey, 28 more people died." -- Macayla Holmes, 11
"I think police brutality, all of the hate crimes going around--the Orlando shooting, that was terrifying I live there. It's a mess. The only place I haven't heard anything about is Canada, to be honest. and my dad has a superstition that they're just keeping their stuff secret so that everyone thinks it's a wonderful place." -- Azia McRay, 12
"I think that it's a little overwhelming to just see everything that's happening and all of the sad things. Seems like right now we haven't been getting a lot of good news. This summer just feels kind of sad." -- Candace Tavares, 20
"My thought may be like other people. There's bad times stuff in the world. There never used to be a time when there was really good stuff, but all these shootings and stuff, it's not good. America's really going downhill." -- Janay Greyer, 12
That was 11-year olds Allison Mikyska and Makayla Holmes, 12-yearold Azia McCray and camp counselor Candace Tavares, 11-year-old Qiy’yam Ibrheem and 12-year-old Janay Greyer. Theirs might not be the responses listeners would expect from a group of mostly pre-teens. But a lot has happened in the past few weeks.
- June 12: A gunman opens fire in a gay Orlando nightclub killing 49 and wounding 53.
- June 23: Britain votes to leave the European Union
- June 28: an airport in Turkey is bombed.The first reported death toll is 28, but rises to 36 and then to 41.
- July 5: Alton Sterling is shot by a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- July 6: Philando Castile is shot by a police officer in St. Paul, Minnesota
- July 7: A black gunman opens fire on police officers overseeing a protest against officer-involved shootings in Dallas, TX. Five officers are killed.
- July 14 Scores of people are killed after a truck plows through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France
- July 17 A Missouri man kills three law officers and wounded three others in an ambush in Baton Rouge, LA
