Over the past week, as the airwaves filled with speeches from the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race and the Republican National Convention in the United States, a little-known mother stood in front of microphones to make a speech.

It was one that no speechwriter had polished, yet it was one that – in its powerful simplicity, devastating calm, and searing call for peace – shook those who heard it.

Julia Jackson is the mother of Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back several times on August 23rd by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The 29-year-old Black man lies in hospital, his spinal cord shattered. But there stood Ms Jackson, in front of the media, and the words just flowed. “You can see that I have beautiful brown skin but take a look at your hand and whatever shade it is, it is beautiful as well,” she said. “God did not make one type of t