This all happened the same week that Amy Cooper — a white woman who lives in New York City — was caught on video calling the police on a black man in the Ramble area of Central Park, a known bird-watching sanctuary, after he asked her to leash her dog. Keedron Bryant responded to the events, it seems, with a beautiful song that he posted to Instagram, which has since been viewed nearly a million times and is being shared across social media at a pace. In it, Keedron sings, “I’m a young black man/doing all that I can/to stand. Oh, but when I look around/and I see what’s being done to my kind/every day, I’m being hunted as prey/My people don’t want no trouble/we’ve had enough struggle/I just want to live/God, protect me/I just want to live/I just want to live.” The video, which features Keedron singing solo, with no accompaniment and a t-shirt that says “black intelligence,” is only a few minutes long. But it’s deeply affecting. He finishes the song with, “I just want to live. I just want to live.”
