It all started in… the library.

The group — comprising youngsters Mila, 10, her sister Lucia, 14, their cousin, Eloise, 13, and their friend Bela, 16 — were inspired to write the track after “a boy in my class came up to me and said that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people,” Mila said in the library video. “After I told him that I was Chinese, he backed away from me. Eloise and I wrote this song based on that experience.”

“It was my first experience of racism, and I didn’t really know how to respond,” she latertoldThe Guardianin a sweet interview soon after a clip of their performance went viral on Twitter.

Rooted in that first experience with racism, the girls wrote this empowering track.

“I hope the song empowers people who have been oppressed,” Eloise told the outlet. “It’s good because I get to scream a lot in it – all of the anger that builds up, it’s good to let it out. It’s really fun to perform.”

“We made it less about intelligence and more about being a bully,” Lucia said. “We wanted to tell a story about something that actually happened to a 9-year-old girl – so it becomes impossible to ignore.”

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“We have cool parents,” Lucia toldThe Guardian.

“I grew up with the DIY culture of punk, going to punk shows, making mixtapes – with the idea that anyone can do whatever,” added Eloise. “Punk is anything we want it to be. I like ‘do-it-yourself’ because it’s whatever you feel like. It doesn’t have to be a certain way.”

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The group’s success, though, is years in the making. They formed in 2018 and Kathleen Hanna of rock band Bikini Hill came across them and invited The Linda Lindas to open at their 2019 show at the Hollywood Palladium. They also were able to perform an original song for a Netflix documentary.

“People are feeling heard. It’s pretty cool to see the thousands of people in our DMs telling us that it really touched them,” Bela told the magazine.

source: people.com