When Molly Zeytoonian is trying to express her feelings, she writes songs. She’s been playing the guitar, singing, and composing since she was 10 years old. Today, the 18-year-old singer-songwriter recently graduated from Lexington High School with a discography of mostly love songs. But as protests calling for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless others killed at the hands of police spread across the country, Zeytoonian began to learn more about systemic racism — and she felt compelled to write a different kind of song.
“I’m feeling really frustrated, and I knew I wanted to say something and help be an effective ally to people of color and black people in particular. But I didn’t really know where to start,” said Zeytoonian. “For me, songwriting has always been a natural way to speak to whatever I’m feeling, and so I sat down and just kind of started writing a song. Some songs take like weeks to write; I have to leave them and come back to it, but this song really wrote itself.”
What followed was “I’ll Walk With You.” The Lexington teen’s lyrics are a call to action for being a white ally to those experiencing racism and police brutality, “I can’t see through your eyes, but I still hear your cries, and I’ll walk with you.”
“That’s really the core message of what I want people to get when they listen to this song,” said Zeytoonian. “We will never understand the way that Black people feel because we just don’t have that history of oppression. We just need to use the privilege that we do have to support the cause and make a change.”
You can listen to Zeytoonian’s full song below, and find more resources for supporting racial justice in Massachusetts here.
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