My name is Annette Martinez Fuller. I'm 42 years old. I have three children. Jolie is my oldest, she's 12. And then I have twin girls, Melia and Giana and they're seven.
So, because my husband is in fact a Chicago police officer, his thinking is still very different from my own. I'm more for the people. In my mind personally, I feel like this had to happen after Floyd. It had to happen because our voices weren't being heard. And even though there was tragedy and it was a huge thing both monetarily and in many aspects, that's how I feel. And then I had those conversations with my husband. Of course, he's looking at it from a totally different lens and he's on that frontline, when it comes to who's having to actually try to stop the violence or protect the masses. So I can, I guess, respect that his opinions are going to be so different from mine. And then those conversations kind of have to come together and what we tell our children is a huge watered down version of this bigger talk that we have. And the biggest things that there is no doubt that we can agree on is the fact that when it comes to George Floyd, that those officers did a million things wrong, that they could have saved this man's life and still upheld the law. So those are things that we have a conversation with our children about, that a man died that shouldn't have died. And even if a person is breaking the law, they don't deserve to die over that. And that, I also will say that in the virtual meetings, towards the end of the school year, I even noticed that they made an effort to have a conversation with the kids about really kind of invoking black pride and what it means to deal with racism.
And my seven-year-old said, during dinner one day, "Black people are not lucky." And I said, "why do you say that?" And she said, "Because they're treated badly because they're black." And so I know that that must have come from whatever discussion was had through their virtual kind of Google meets. I believe that the CPD, I mean, CPS read them a book and it was to kind of open up that conversation. So we had to really have a whole other conversation with our children as to just some of the history of the injustices that African-Americans have dealt with, but the word lucky or unlucky is just really kind of not the right way to describe the whole situation.
My daughter who's 12, I can tell she's the kind of personality that internalizes a lot and doesn't express everything, but really her response is just that, "It's so sad that he died. It's sad that he was treated that way." And when it comes to the rioting and the danger that all of that kind of has brought on, I think it's more, just we try to really kind of pray before my husband leaves for work on a shift because we know that this is a climate more than any time in ever that police have such a low level of confidence and respect. So it's not an easy job and we know who he is and we love him, but we know that people don't see him that way when he has that uniform on. So it's more just trying to lift him up and kind of keep him covered really.
I think that they definitely, I would say at least for my 12 year old, I would say my seven year olds are pretty unaware of all of the ramifications, but my twelve-year-old definitely, we've had those conversations as to those, "There's some cops out there that are bad at their jobs. They should not be in that role and that their personal beliefs are controlling how they treat others when that's not part of their job." And just knowing that, I think she knows because of who her dad is, that not all cops are bad and not all cops are good because of what she's seen on television.
