February 26, 2014—Two Year Anniversary of the Murder of Trayvon Martin: Nationwide Outpouring Against Police and Racist Murders of Black and Latino Youth
Updated March 3, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Wednesday, February 26 marked two years since Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, Florida, by racist vigilante George Zimmerman—found not guilty and allowed to walk free. Two weeks ago, a jury in Jacksonville, Florida, refused to convict Michael Dunn for the murder of 17-year-old Jordan Davis (see "Mistrial of Michael Dunn: An Intolerable Injustice")
To mark the two-year anniversary, people across the U.S. protested to demand a STOP to the killing of youth of color by cops and racist vigilantes. There were rallies and protests in the streets, in public squares and college campuses; artistic and cultural events; students making a statement holding Skittles at candlelight marches. The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reported on a rally at the student union at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee organized by the Black Student Union.
Actions took place in at least 20 cities across the country, some responding to the call from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network for a Day of Outrage and Remembrance for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis—declaring "Hoodies Up! Targets Up! Fists Raised! We're Standing Up! No More Murder of Black Youth!"—in larger cities like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles as well as smaller areas like Greenville, South Carolina, and New Haven, CT. In Jacksonville, Florida where Jordan was murdered, Carl Dix from the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network spoke at a rally in front of the courthouse. According to stopmassincarceration.net, "most of those who turned out were people who had directly felt the lash of this country's criminal 'injustice' system: family members of people wrongfully incarcerated or of people who had been brutalized or murdered by police and formerly incarcerated people."
In a message issued on February 26, Carl Dix said, "Things don't end with today's action. We are just getting started. There needs to be a movement of determined resistance to the criminalization of our youth, to the warehousing of people in prison, to mass incarceration overall and all its consequences. We need to go from the hundreds who are acting today to thousands acting soon, to ultimately mobilizing a movement of millions of people saying no more to the slow genocide the criminal 'injustice' system in this country enforces on Black and Brown people."
Carl Dix said in the message that he and Cornel West had developed a basic vision for a Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration in October: "We envision a month of nationwide rallies and demonstrations, major concerts, symposiums and panels, well known people speaking out, people wearing armbands and ribbons, and more. A month that can change the way millions of people in this society look at mass incarceration."
The hundreds who took to the streets and acted and spoke out in different ways on February 26 showed the potential for this vision to become a reality.
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