Take The Lead Transcript

Junior exercise science major Ella Folsom-Fraster talks to us about the "Take The Lead" initiative to end hate speech that is racist, sexist, or homophobic. This is a talking-head interview with photography overlay throughout the piece.

Hi, my name is Ella Folsom-Fraster.

 

I'm a junior exercise science major with a minor in Autism and Applied Behavior Analysis and I'm from Arlington, Massachusetts.

 

So about a year ago, a few fans during a Red Sox game were yelling racist comments at one of the outfielders.

 

Once the Red Sox kind of got word of it they decided that this wasn't OK and this wasn't what they stand for.

 

They decided that they needed to do something about it.

 

They got all of the New England sports teams together and they brought them to Fenway and they decided to educate them on topics like race and other social justice issues.

 

They decided to create a PSA to get it out to the public.

 

Something to play all of their games in all their different venues they wanted their fans to create conversation about race and to feel comfortable talking about it.

 

It's not OK to have this kind of hateful speech here where we play and it's not OK to have it in society either so we're going to stop this and we're going to stand up

against it and we encourage you to do the same.

 

Growing up sports was the biggest part of my life and social justice issues were always something that were being talked about and taught to me and my brother when we were growing up so social justice mixed with sports was the perfect combo.

 

I came back to school and I needed to find people of our interested in doing it with me so I found and I connected with Chris and Tommy and I showed them my ideas and they loved it and they were looking to create something that got students talking about social justice issues.

 

This is just the beginning.

 

This is just to get students thinking and eventually I would love students to start talking to each other listening to each other hearing each other's stories because no matter what you've been through or how much you feel you know on this topic there's always more to learn.

 

I want all students no matter what their background is no matter what they feel they know about something like this to talk to each other to learn from each other so I hope that this isn't the end and that students see this and are kind of encouraged to go out and do something more and to be a better person and to stand up to things

like racism and sexism and homophobia.