Revolution #266, April 22, 2012
Chicago April 10 Day of Outrage
Revolution received this report:
At a local high school letting out people distributed the call to come out to the Trayvon Martin rally downtown and challenged the students around fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution. They had a sandwich board with both the picture of the covers on Revolution newspaper of Trayvon Martin "A Modern American Lynching" and the newest cover calling for April 10 as a day of action. Just saying the name Trayvon Martin caused students to run up and grab fliers and posters. At a recent talent show at this school some students had performed a tribute to Trayvon Martin.
The after school teacher on bus duty came near us to try and keep us at a distance from the students, but in a freak wind gust, fliers and posters flew past him and students grabbed them, coming up and asking for more posters of the party's statement.
At a nearby triangle where three streets come together, as well as students from three high schools, the crew talked to more students who gather there for bus rides. Some took small bundles to get out to friends and family.
Then people headed downtown to the Chicago loop. They stopped at a downtown plaza which is both a crossroad of sorts for downtown workers and students and a place where people hang out. A couple of people in the area stepped to the mike to talk about their outrage over the murder of Trayvon and the need for fundamental change in this system. While there was a noticeable reaction from the crowd, many white people walked by without a second look with only a few younger white people taking the flier or even acknowledging this terrible crime. This was challenged with agitation that Sunsara Taylor had in her recent article in Revolution newspaper.
Some of the younger black youth said that they were part of the Trayvon Martin "movement"—that they had t-shirts that had his name on them. They all pulled up their "hoodies" to be a part of the protest for a short time. A couple of people from the plaza joined the group and headed over to the main gathering where speeches were held. A small spirited march led with the stolen lives banner showing the faces of people murdered by the police then marched through the downtown loop, with people along the route taking more fliers and Revolution newspapers.
The chants and the banner captured people's attention. A young Black woman coming down the sidewalk toward the march raised her fist and shouted "that's what I'm talkin' about." Someone in a passing car honked in time to the chant "Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till—the system lets the racists kill." A young white guy from the Nashville Occupy movement took small bundles of Revolution newspapers and fliers to get out to his collective, while a long-time supporter of Revolution got poster, papers and stickers to take to Chicago's west side. These kinds of responses were repeated by others all along the route—people clapping, raising their fists, chanting along and stopping to talk and express their outrage. But with some Black folks also expressing skepticism about resistance and even resignation about the overall conditions facing Black people.
Along with the flier on Trayvon, people were passing out a flier for the April 19 National Day of Protest to Stop Mass Incarceration. It was striking that almost everyone who stopped, even very briefly, is following the case and aware that the prosecutor had decided, on that day, not to take the case to the grand jury. They also saw immediately the connection with mass incarceration - that a whole caste of people are less than human, criminalized, and therefore their lives can be stolen by police, vigilantes, or the criminal injustice system. Moving that to see that it is on us to bring this to an end is a whole other struggle.
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