Our human of Barrington today – sophomore Jess Hurtado – has a journey of a story to tell. Read on to see how events in the past summer urged Hurtado to take action, working around the confines of COVID-19.“I was motivated over the summer to start the Black Lives Matter book club because of all the protests happening due to the death of George Floyd. As a high-schooler, I wanted to join in on the movement, but I didn’t know what exactly "white privilege" was. So, I decided that the best way to learn was to read books on the topic. And then, assuming others also wanted knowledge about the Black Lives Matter movement as well, I started the BLM book club. The pandemic definitely impacted the Black Lives Matter book club. We had to do all of our meetings over Zoom instead of in-person. Plus, it was hard to recruit people to join considering school wasn’t in session. If COVID-19 wasn’t an issue, I would have loved to go to peaceful protests with the club, but I’m glad we were able to work around the pandemic and still meet. The club I started lasted for about five weeks before something came up that prevented me from running it. We read around three or four very different books that focused on white privilege and African-American history in the United States. On average, it took about two weeks for each book. We met for Zoom calls twice throughout the novels.”Jess Hurtado, sophomore. Interviewed by Vidya Madana.