A lively group of more than 40 Pre-K children crowded together on a recent Wednesday morning at the ABC Early Learning Academy in Midtown and sat with their legs crossed, fidgeting and giggling while waiting for their speaker to be introduced.
On this day, March 7, that speaker was Brandon White, the gay 20-year old who was brutally beaten in southwest Atlanta last month after leaving a grocery store. A videotape of the attack was uploaded to the internet where it went viral. White’s audience with the children is his first official speaking engagement as part of his new anti-violence campaign, “Speak Out with Brandon.”
“If you guys are being bullied it can make a lot of things you do a lot harder than what they actually are,” White told the four and five-year olds. “If you’re being bullied at school, you may not want to go outside and play with the other kids, you may not want to talk to anyone, you may want to sit in the corner. But you’re not alone in what you do.”
