Written By: J. Laura
In the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, one woman in particular, Nia Miranda, made the spotlight when she confronted two women vandalizing a Starbucks in June of this year in Los Angeles.
“It is never OK to commit a crime in our honor when we, the Black community, will be targeted for it,” Nia Miranda told Fox News.
Miranda’s video went viral when it was seen by millions. In it, she confronted two women, who appeared to be white, vandalizing a Starbucks shop with the letters “BLM.”
The occurrence happened during a BLM protest that Miranda was driven to attend in the wake of George Floyd’s death, which sparked something in her, she explained.
“It’s difficult to hear a baby’s cry, but when you hear a grown up asking for his mother that was deceased — it does something to you,” she sniffed as she recalled the moment after seeing the video of Floyd. “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing […] I was sick. I remember crying.”
“We’re quarantined for God’s sake. How is it that you’re still in the street killing us?” she said. “I knew I had to do something and at the present moment, my something was going to be the protest.”
The BLM protest “was one of the most beautiful things I have experienced,” she added.
But she was shocked when she ran into two women who were spray painting on the Starbucks shop.
“You all are doing that for us, but we didn’t ask you to do that,” she said in the video as she confronted the two women. “Don’t spray stuff over here when they’re going to blame Black people for this, and Black people didn’t do it.”
Others who witnessed the vandalism said nothing, Nia Miranda explains. “It’s up to us to speak up.”
“They are going to blame it on us! You all are part of the problem!” Miranda exclaimed in the video.
Miranda told Emerald, “It’s not the fact that it was someone who wasn’t Black that was helping the cause. If I hadn’t taken that video, then the news would have reported that as someone Black vandalizing.”
“Spray painting a building; that’s not helping us,” she said.
“It fogs up what the message is,” she continued. “The news is going to make it seem like protestors are rioters — and that’s not the case.”
But the day that the video was uploaded, all of the sudden she received a DM saying that her viral video inspired Skrillex, Ty Dolla $ign, and Clemmons to create a new single, which will appear on an album to be released by Roc Nation on October 9th.
“I listened to the song, and when I heard the lyrics […], it broke me down,” she added. “It broke me down because it was so beautiful. And it was what stands for artivism,” she explained, a term used to describe the use of art for positive change.
“It’s a compilation album with multiple artists, so you’re going to be in for a surprise,” Miranda hinted. “All of the proceeds are going to businesses and org[anizations]s about changing social injustice and police brutality.”
Miranda said that the album was going to be “nice.” But what made her happiest was knowing that she is a part of history.
Nia Miranda’s drive to create change continues as she thrives with her own production company, Bringing Love Back.
The company wishes to infuse the love Miranda has for her community and spread it to other communities through events and films. One of its upcoming film series, The Player’s Slayer, will highlight how a young woman helped stop the injustice of women after being exploited by powerful individuals.
“I really hope that with my films and my events it can bring awareness and make people more proactive about their life, because the truth is we only get one,” she said.
Miranda is also the founder of Sophisticated Smoke LLC, which aims to provide older, low income people access to medical cannabis in Michigan. She and her husband take them in as patients, and make cookies for them, oatmeal, and other cannabis edibles.
Miranda’s interest in CBD started when she was in a car accident in Detroit and injured her back. Treatment included physical therapy, steroid injections, and pain pills.
After consuming medical cannabis, she realized she did not feel back pain.
“It changed my life; it gave me my life back,” she said. “Being able to use maijuana responsibility for its medicinal purposes changed my life; gave me my life back.”
She has since used medical cannabis as one of her main sources of medication, and no longer takes pharmaceuticals due to their side effects.
As we wrapped up the interview, Nia Miranda hoped for one thing and one thing only for the Black community; “I want us to be able to walk on this world feeling as free as we should be,” she said.
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