Parents of hugging toddler 'besties' speak out on resurfaced viral video: 'More relevant than it was before'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}There’s nobody like your best friend.
The parents of two toddler boys who melted hearts across the Internet when they ran to each other for a big hug on the streets of New York City say it’s important that the viral video of their adorable tots has resurfaced amid the ongoing George Floyd protests, as “a beacon of hope” for a better future.
In late May, Internet-famous video footage of tots Maxwell and Finnegan made the rounds on social media, after originally debuting last fall. The re-upped video soon recieved over 19 million views on Twitter.
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"Never forget," Minneapolis DJ Kam Bennett captioned the quick clip.
As Black Lives Matter protestors across the country decry racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death in police custody on May 25, the parents of Maxwell 2, who is black, and Finnegan, 3, who is white, say the resurfaced video is more relevant than ever.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We didn’t really expect any of this. It was just our boys being our boys," Maxwell's dad Michael Cisneros told Today in a recent interview. "We just thought it was a great moment… I put it on my Facebook and kept blowing up."
Cisneros' original video of the toddler besties’ hug has since received 1.2 million views on Facebook, and more than 13,000 shares.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I didn’t see it at the time, but I see it now,” Cisneros continued. “It was a beacon of hope. It shows love and what the future could be like if children were raised in a different way… It’s going to be kind of iconic. I’ve gotten messages from people all around the world."
According to Finnegan’s dad Dan McKenna, the heartwarming clip is still gaining steam.
"We saw it shared and people started reaching out. We've seen a lot of things that said, 'Wow, this is still relevant,’” McKenna told Australian outlet ABC News. “It's more relevant than it was before."
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To that end, the boys’ parents recently launched a joint Instagram account “to inspire love and change” in the fight against racism, Finnegan’s mom Erica Russo McKenna said on Facebook.