East Oakland Response to Zimmerman Trial
July 16, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
As the jury was deliberating in the Zimmerman trial, we were out among the masses. We found the response was different than during the trial. Before, while people did follow the trial closely and would tell us stories of what they know from watching the trial, once the jury went into deliberation, the mood started to change—from observing to speculating on the outcome. And the atmosphere became more charged politically! A lot of young people, high school age, were telling us that Zimmerman is guilty and he should be found guilty, which they anticipated, while people in their 30s+ were skeptical about that verdict. The older ones told us they remembered Rodney King and Oscar Grant when Mehserle, the BART cop who killed Oscar Grant, was only convicted of manslaughter and spent 11 months in jail.
As the jury deliberated a second day, there was a sense of "antsyness" in the air. People were wondering when the verdict would come out. This included young people who in the normal days would watch us, but just pass us by without much comment. That day, people of all ages wanted to talk. They spilled out anger of their observations during the trial—about the treatment of Rachel Jeantel, about the jury selection, about why the trial focused on who was on top of whom and not on why this guy carried a handgun and stalked Trayvon in the first place despite what the dispatcher told him to do.
Many people were thinking of bigger questions, like why this kind of terror happened and why revolution is the only way out of this madness. They wanted to wrangle about how revolution could be made. One young man's face lit up when talking about why revolution is the way to end all this horror including this injustice. But then he questioned how to do this when they have "all the things." When asked what he meant by "all the things," he mentioned the police and all that they have. Another young man in his mid-twenties told us that he had a way to make revolution. His suggestion was to put out a flyer that said the internet would be ended in 30 days. That would draw people out into the streets and we would be out there to lead them to make revolution. All this reflected that people were grappling with questions they don't normally grapple with. Also many other people also suggested they would go crazy if Zimmerman walked free.
On Sunday morning, the neighborhood was very quiet as many were at church. Some of those we talked with were bummed out, saying, "What is done is done. What can we do?" Some others were pissed off and kept saying, "This is not right. There is no justice in this system" in response to our slogan "We are all Trayvon Martin. The whole damn system is guilty." Still others contrasted this verdict (a man walks free after killing a Black youth) with the punishment Michael Vick received as a result of doing dog-fighting. We also noticed there were arguments among groupings of people living on the same street. Some who got bummed out were saying, "No need to talk about all this" in response to our agitation. Others jumped out and said, "Let her talk. What she said is right!"
At 3 pm on Sunday, there were 20+ people gathering at the corner for a rally that was previously called. People came from shelters, the neighborhood; a woman came with her kids who heard the bullhorn earlier—we were driving around in a car with a bullhorn sticking out of the window, ready to jump out at any time when we saw groupings of people in the hood. A Black Muslim family came from Berkeley after reading about the gathering online. This family's mother said the verdict made her feel terrified about letting her kids grow up and go out by themselves. "What kind of world is this?"
Some of these masses went with us to join the demonstration in downtown Oakland, where we also met some others from the neighborhood we had met in the days before. This included people from the homeless shelter as well as several young men who we met when they were painting a mural as an art project at school that morning. Also, a middle-aged Black man who proudly told us, "I told you I would be here!" At the rally and demonstration we also ran into masses coming from another poverty-stricken area of the city. A middle-aged woman showed up at the neighborhood rally holding a self-made banner listing all the injustices to Black people, from the Rosewood massacre to Rodney King, Oscar Grant, and Trayvon Martin.
The next day, Monday, when the BA Everywhere Van Tour went to the neighborhood, we found a lot of support, and people were interested in learning about how another world is possible. A total of 32 people that day watched parts of the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!, including a group of youth who were painting a mural. (Their teacher and some of them were very glad to have the Trayvon poster and said they'd be thinking of doing a mural of Trayvon, Oscar Grant, and maybe Emmett Till.) Seven or eight of these youth gathered around the van to watch the beginning of the film, and three of them stayed to watch more. They were interested in having a regular "workshop" to watch the film and discuss it more while getting involved in the movement. We ran into two of these youth again in another demonstration Monday night.
In another city in the area, a couple of people who are already part of the movement for revolution were angered by the verdict and inspired by the people standing up to injustice. An immigrant woman was very perturbed by the fact that the jury did not include any Black people. She wants to learn more about the situation and history of Black people in the U.S. Her daughter, in the middle of this outbreak, has been seriously grappling with the Revolutionary Communist Party's strategy for revolution, including wrangling with the concepts of "jolts" and what a revolutionary crisis would look like. She is thinking about all kinds of ways to bring BA and his vision out through the van tour and the BA Everywhere campaign. Besides volunteering to be part of the van tour, she and her younger sister want to duplicate one of the Revolution covers of Trayvon to fundraise for BA Everywhere.
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.