On the steps of Staten Island’s Borough Hall: a cry for justice
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

NEW YORK — July 20, 2013. Standing together in the midday sun on a hot July Saturday, members of Staten Island’s diverse progressive community cried out for justice: justice for Trayvon Martin; justice for the Martin Family; justice for all of the children - and their parents - who have suffered as a result of gun violence, and lastly; justice for George Zimmerman who was not afforded an opportunity to atone for his actions.

 
They were not alone. Across the harbor — at One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan — and across the country, progressives held rallies. The “Justice for Trayvon Martin” rallies were part of a “National Day of Action in 100 Cities” called by Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. The “100 City” rallies were organized locally by NAN and other groups including the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, the NAACP, and MoveOn.

At Police Plaza: a call to “Boycott Florida”
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

 
The protesters were clear in their single demand: they called on Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice to file charges against George Zimmerman for the racial profiling and killing of Trayvon Martin. Civil Rights organizations backing the rallies argued that Zimmerman violated Martin’s civil rights when the neighborhood watch captain shot and killed the unarmed teen. A secondary demand, voiced at many rallies, was a call to the Obama Administration to overturn the Stand Your Ground law, in Florida and across the U.S. This is the law that made Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict possible. When legal scholars argued, on television and in print, that the prosecution’s case was weak, Civil Rights advocates responded by pointing out that Zimmerman was ordered to stand down by police and failed to do so. The NAACP and others have argued that racism informed the verdict and if the situation was reversed the outcome would have been different.

 
NLN had team coverage of the rallies: Bud Korotzer covered One Police Plaza and Thomas Altfather Good was at the Staten Island protest. Here are some images from the events:

 

Speaking out on Staten Island
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

On the steps of Borough Hall
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

Spreading the word…
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

Bobby Digi of Island Voice calls for justice
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

City Council member Debi Rose (l) and Rev. Kathlyn Barrett-Layne (r)
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

Peace Action’s Sally Jones
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

The jury of six had one African American member
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

Reverend Al Sharpton speaking at “1PP”
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

Members of Trayvon Martin’s family at the rally
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

Hazel Dukes, President of the NAACP New York State Conference
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY 13)
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

“We are all Trayvon Martin”
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

Outside 1PP…
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)

Click HERE To View All Of The Photos and a Video From The Staten Island Protest…

 
Bud and Fran Korotzer contributed reporting to this article.

Click HERE To View Video

 
NEW YORK — July 19, 2013. Last Sunday thousands of New Yorkers filled Union Square to protest the ‘Not Guilty’ verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. The trial of the man who shot and killed unarmed Trayvon Martin ended in a verdict that sparked outrage across the United States and caused many observers to wonder if the trial wasn’t as troubling as the shooting itself.

 

Attorney-Author Randy Shaw
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

I wish I could say I was surprised by George Zimmerman’s acquittal. I wish I could say that I thought this nearly all white jury would be different. I wish I could say that I thought the facts were so obvious that no jury could sanction Trayvon Martin’s killing. But we have seen this script before. And since reading Paul Ortiz’s Emancipation Betrayed — reviewed in these pages in 2005 — I’ve known that Florida’s history of racial violence against African-Americans is as bad as that of Alabama or Mississippi, only less publicized.

Activists are trained to use extreme examples of social or racial injustice to mobilize the public to prevent future wrongs. And I applaud those responding to the Trayvon Martin injustice in such a manner. But when you see episodes of violent racism against blacks repeated year after year, decade after decade, it is hard to be optimistic. The United States is retreating in its commitment to racial justice. The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, and put affirmative action on life support. States are passing voter identification laws to deter minority voting. The media can analyze the specifics of the trial all it wants, but the bottom line is that like Emmett Till, the 14-year old lynched in 1955 for meeting the eyes of a white woman, Trayvon Martin was killed solely because he was African-American—and in both these cases and thousands more, their murderers were acquitted.

When I studied constitutional law, many of my fellow law students went to great pains to find “objective” legal reasons for court decisions obviously driven by the judges racial and class biases. Having committed to a field allegedly built on legal reasoning and case precedents, these students could not accept that racist and elitist judges issue rulings to advance their personal views.

This conscious suppression of racial realities explains media coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. Each day, the performances of the prosecutor, defense counsel, witnesses and judge were carefully analyzed. Much attention was given to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” defense, which was seized upon by those desperate to find a non-racial basis for the outcome.

The media treated the Zimmerman trial as if Florida’s and the nation’s long history of racial bias in trials involving the killing of African-Americans would not be determinative (while Zimmerman is Latino, he was identified as white by the police that refused to arrest him after the murder). The trial judge barred overt discussions of race, even though that’s what millions of Americans knew the case was about.

Many of us held out a shred of hope that this would be the rare case where a nearly all white Florida jury would do what white juries in the South and much of America have almost never done: convict an armed white-identified man for killing an unarmed black man.

But anyone thinking there was a chance of Zimmerman’s conviction had to know the fix was in when the top law enforcement officer testified he believed the killer’s story despite its many inconsistencies. If the police, who did not even arrest Zimmerman for the murder, believed his claim of self-defense, how could the jury find otherwise?

Randy Shaw, author of Beyond The Fields, a history of the UFW
(Photo: Thomas Altfather Good / NLN)

 
Obama’s Post-Racial America

After Obama’s election, a narrative emerged that we were in a “post-racial” America. Yet as the Trayvon Martin case and many other examples confirm, Obama’s 2008 victory and his re-election in 2012 heightened fears among many whites that blacks and Latinos were “taking over” the country.

That’s why gun sales have exploded, and why House Republicans openly talk about the Latino “threat” to American values. Right-wing talk radio sees George Zimmerman as a hero. As Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas only half-jokingly said prior to the verdict, Zimmerman will either go to jail or be a keynote speaker at the 2016 Republican Convention.

The white backlash against the federal civil and voting rights acts of 1964-66 has not gone away. And Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election left white racists feeling under siege.That Latino votes helped elect Obama in both 2008 and 2012 intensified these feelings, as did demographic trends that show the percentage of white voters in national elections decreasing.

Paula Deen is not the only prominent white person openly expressing racist views. Sirius XM employs a nighttime sports talk host, Dino Costa, who described Hank Aaron as “disgusting” for criticizing baseball’s lack of outreach to African-Americans. Costa, like Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and others, know that as long as they don’t use the “n-word” any disparaging comments about blacks are fair game.

The extreme market fragmentation caused first by cable and then the Internet enables white media figures to thrive selling anti-black racism to their audience. And many whites in law enforcement or who end up serving on juries like that for Trayvon Martin listen to these shows and become even more fearful and resentful toward blacks.

The traditional media could not come out and say that a nearly all-white Sanford, Florida jury would never convict a white-identified man for killing an African-American. But this verdict is consistent with America’s shameful history, and Trayvon Martin joins a long list of victims.

Randy Shaw is Editor of BeyondChron. This piece originally appeared in the July 15, 2013 edition of BeyondChron - reprinted with permission from the author.