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*Today, Feb. 5, would have been Trayvon Martin’s 23rd birthday. But as you know, nearly six years ago, the unarmed 17-year-old was gunned down by murderous neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.
Martin’s tragic death sparked nationwide protests against racial bias and America’s corrupt and unjust criminal justice system, and inspired the early workings of Black Lives Matter.
#BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors has penned a THINK PIECE that addresses how “Trayvon sparked a movement that stands up to fascism and white supremacy. We need to hold him in our memories.”
Other highlights from her article include:
“The senseless attack on Trayvon’s life reignited a movement across the globe and pushed us to acknowledge the worth of a generation that has been historically disenfranchised. Trayvon and his generation have been served incarceration, low-wage no wage jobs, over-policing and laws that criminalize our every day in this country.”
“Many of us believed that Black Lives Matter would move this country to not only reckon with white racism but to usher in new laws and practices that would curb vigilantism and law enforcement violence. But, instead, white nationalism was nurtured and began to take root among the American people.”
Cullors also notes that: “We elected a white supremacist president and, every day that he is in office, he erodes the United States constitution and emboldens a new kind of white nationalism — one that isn’t cloaked in white robes, but instead carries tiki torches and espouses hateful rhetoric. Last year marked another height of white supremacist violence in this country: We witnessed people in Charlottesville, Virginia stand up against “one of the largest white supremacist events in recent history” and then watched the Trump administration defend the racism.”
On his birthday, Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, took to Twitter to pay tribute to her son.
“Happy Heavenly ’23’ Birthday Trayvon you will forever be my Son/Sun !!” tweeted Fulton, who has turned her pain into advocating for #BLM.
“Last year was one of the deadliest years of fatal police shootings, with at least 987 documented cases in the Washington Post’s fatal force database,” Cullors wrote. “And more specifically, in the spring of 2017, we saw the deaths of three young Black boys — Jordan Edwards, Jayson Negron and Darius Smith — at the hands of law enforcement in a month.”
“Civil rights in this country is not enough to resolve the atrocities this country has waged against Black people.”
You can read her full article here.
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