Whitefield Rising: It’s their turn! Kids join ‘Black Friday’

Bengaluru: Protest knows no age. Nearly a hundred children joined Whitefield Rising's Black Friday campaign, wearing black as a mark of protest against the abysmal civic conditions in their neighbourhood.

When Yagnalalakshmi Ramanchandralu, the owner of Little Elly School on Borewell Road, sent out a circular telling parents that they could send their children in black she didn’t expect the response she received.

“Apart from a handful of kids, everybody came in black,” she said. “They were dropped off by their parents, who were also in black!” The children are too young, of course, to fully understand the cause they supported – one five-year-old boy’s answer to why he wore black was, “There are holes,” Yagnalakshmi explained, laughing.

The kids even posed with a placard saying ‘We need good roads to commute to school’. Thousands of people joined the Black Friday campaign across the Whitefield area. Their Facebook page, which has nearly 10,000 members, was flooded with selfies of people clad in black, while potholes and shoddy roads provided a grim background.

They even made a video standing near potholes that need attention, which were posted on Twitter with the hashtag WhitefieldBlackFriday and @WFRising.