In a crowded coffee shop in Vancouver’s Cascade Park neighborhood, Alexis Miller sang audibly yet softly: “Why can’t you see what you’re doin’ to me?”
Inspired by the “It Gets Better” campaign, which was sparked by several suicide deaths of bullied homosexual teenagers, the 11-year-old Wy’east student wrote a song about her own struggle with being teased and taunted.
“I just want kids to be aware of bullying and how they can help stop it,” Alexis says. “I want them to stand up to the bully.”
The song is just the beginning of an anti-bullying message the sixth-grader, who said she has alternately been called “fat” and “anorexic,” plans to push. Alexis said she hopes to be allowed to lead an assembly warning against bullying that she would ultimately want expanded into classroom curriculum.
Alexis is in the early stages of launching a nonprofit devoted to sounding the horn against bullying.
“I’ve been bullied and I don’t like seeing other kids bullied, so I want to stop it,” Alexis says.
To make that happen, students need to adjust their perception of cool, Alexis said during a recent appearance at an anti-bullying forum.
“I think that we should look out for each other. It is that simple. If I see someone being bullied in the hall at school, I can walk up to them and ask if they are OK. Imagine if a football player is being picked on and a goth kid walks up and says are you OK? … and then a cheerleader, then a drama kid. The bully will see that the kids are not going to put up with it. We need to make bullying not cool … anti-bullying is the cool thing to do!”
Alexis’s plans gained momentum last month when her acting coach, Katie O’Grady, invited her to participate in an anti-bullying event at the Backspace Café in Portland.
O’Grady, a Portland-based actress/producer, said she organized “Frank Conversations: Speaking Out on Bullying,” because she wanted to provide a space for kids to open “up their hearts about their experience with being tortured.”
“I think it really motivated her when she came to the event and saw all the kids,” O’Grady said of Alexis, who performed her song and filmed a confessional-type interview that could appear in “One,” a film O’Grady is producing.
“We’re going to take the interviews from that night, combine them with a short film, and turn it into a 40-minute DVD available to schools, Boys and Girls Clubs and community centers,” O’Grady said.
The film, which is expected to be completed early next year, aligns with the assembly Alexis hopes to stage, and the nonprofit group she plans to launch.
The spunky tween, who claims Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber among her musical inspirations, has dubbed her burgeoning nonprofit the 6:31 Project, named for the Bible verse Luke 6:31, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
“It’s that simple,” Alexis says.
Alexis was attending school in Wilsonville, Ore., when her experience with bullying reached its apex. She was shoved and kicked, and often was the subject of vicious rumors.
“It got so bad she would lock herself in the bathroom at school and text me, begging me to come get her,” said her mother, Michelle Miller.
Alexis and her family returned to Vancouver last spring, with months remaining in the school year. As they prepared to move, Michelle said, students on Alexis’s bus started chants of “Just leave.”
“When you’ve lived through something like that, you really want to help other people,” Alexis says.
Alexis has talked with school administrators she and her mom say are supportive of her ambitions. Her goal, according to Michelle Miller, “isn’t just the adults taking care of the problem; it’s the kids looking out for each other.”
Alexis put it another way in her song, “Free to Be:”
“I just can’t do this on my own
You took my hand and helped me to stand
Now I’m not alone.”
