When thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across America to protest racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death this summer, a pair of presidential daughters was among them.
Malia Obama, 22, and her sister, Sasha, 19, who are both college students, quietly participated in demonstrations in an unspecified place this summer, former President Barack Obama told People.
“I didn’t have to give them a lot of advice because they had a very clear sense of what was right and what was wrong and their own agency and the power of their voice and the need to participate,” he said. “Malia and Sasha found their own ways to get involved with the demonstrations and activism that you saw with young people this summer, without any prompting from Michelle and myself, on their own initiative.”
Obama did not share where or when they were involved in the demonstration but said that his daughters kept a low profile while using their democratic right to protest. “They were very much in organizer mode,” he said. “I could not have been prouder of them.”
Malia and Sasha Obama themselves have not spoken about it publicly, as they rarely give interviews.
The former president, 59, was a lawyer and community organizer in Chicago before his political career. His daughters asked him for some advice on how to mobilize following the death of Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 after police officer Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on his neck for at least eight minutes and 15 seconds as Floyd said he couldn’t breathe.