New York – One Year Later, Hoodie Protests For Trayvon Martin

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    Supporters hold a candlelight vigil at the exact moment when teenager Trayvon Martin was shot one year ago by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida Feb. 26, 2013. (Brian Blanco / Reuters)New York – Demonstrators symbolically wearing hoodies gathered in New York, Florida and California on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, reviving a national discussion on gun laws and racial profiling.

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    Actor Jamie Foxx joined Martin’s parents and several hundred protesters for a candlelight vigil in New York City’s Union Square, while a smaller crowd estimated at 110 to 125 met at a park in the Florida town where Martin died, vowing to continue to agitate for an end to racial discrimination.

    “We want you (to) know we love you and we won’t leave you,” Foxx told Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, in New York.

    Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, 17, in the Orlando suburb of Sanford on February 26, 2012, and initially went free based on his claims of self defense. Then a national outcry forced the city’s police chief to resign and the governor to appoint a special prosecutor.

    Zimmerman now faces second-degree murder charges and a June trial. He has maintained his innocence, and supporters say he has been unfairly tainted as racist, noting the neighborhood had been hit by a wave of break-ins and that Zimmerman is of mixed race – his father is white and his mother Afro-Peruvian.

    In Sanford, the case triggered deep emotions, and protesters staged a candlelight vigil and moment of silence at 7:15 p.m., the time Martin was killed, at Fort Mellon Park.

    “There are no excuses for violence against our children. Let us take the tragedy of Trayvon’s death and use it for good,” said organizer Geri Hepburn, a white parent of a teenage son who became politically active as a result of the shooting.

    The crowd was small compared to the thousands who filled the same park at the apex of public outrage of the killing last year, when the story dominated national news for weeks.

    SYMBOLIC HOODIES

    In New York, demonstrators recreated the “Million Hoodie March” of last year, when people wore hooded sweatshirts in the style worn by Martin the night of his death, when Zimmerman called police to report a suspicious looking person in his gated neighborhood and defied a police admonishment not to follow him.

    The coast-to-coast series of events also saw a crowd gather in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles. Participants carried lit candles and many of them also wore hoodies, said organizer Najee Ali, who spoke at the gathering in Los Angeles.

    “Trayvon was everyone’s son. He belonged to all of us,” Ali said in a phone interview.

    Martin was on his way home to the house of his father’s girlfriend, and the hoodie became a symbol of what critics considered racial profiling.

    “We are all Trayvon Martin,” demonstrators chanted at Tuesday’s vigil.

    James Flood, 33, a black bartender and screenwriter, said he was constantly the victim of racial profiling and wanted better for his 11-year-old son.

    “My skin color cannot change no matter how much money I make. I still get profiled,” Flood said. “It has to stop.”

    Zimmerman, 29, who was released on bail, remained out of sight on the anniversary.

    Thrust into the national spotlight, Martin’s grieving parents, Fulton and father Tracy Martin, have become national advocates for stricter gun control laws and critics of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

    The law, passed in 2005, allows people to use lethal force in self defense if they are in fear of serious bodily harm. More than 20 states have since passed similar laws.

    Police cited that law in initially declining to arrest Zimmerman, which sparked celebrity protests and popular demonstrations across the country, turning the case into an international story.

    Zimmerman’s attorney plans to invoke the Stand Your Ground law at an April 29 hearing at which a Florida judge could determine if the law applied to Zimmerman, possibly granting him immunity and averting a criminal trial.


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    17 Comments
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    Reb Yid
    Reb Yid
    11 years ago

    Where’s the vigil for all the white people killed by Blacks, which far outnumbers the other way around?

    honestbroker
    honestbroker
    11 years ago

    This is another non-story of freeloaders with too much time on their hands,
    There were no witnesses, ergo it’s a case of whom do you believe. Given Trayvon Martin’s history, I’m inclined to believe Zimmerman.
    OK all you libs, let the faux outrage at my comment, and the ignorant , labeling and name calling begin.

    Secular
    Secular
    11 years ago

    Trayvon was a thug, a victim of his thuggish lifestyle.

    ConcernedMember
    ConcernedMember
    11 years ago

    Opinions of Trayvon Martin are not the main point in this case.

    The bottom line is that Zimmerman was told by law enforcement not to engage and he blatantly refused their orders and chose to engage anyway.

    Neighborhood watch does not equal Batman. He called the police and he should have waited for their arrival.

    Keep in mind, per ALL accounts, Martin was not in the midst of committing some crime, no one’s life was in danger, nothing was going on. The problems began when Zimmerman engaged Martin, against Police orders.

    He was told to wait and he chose not to and that is when the problems began. The background of Martin is completely irrelevant.

    yossele
    yossele
    11 years ago

    When will young, black men finally win the freedom to commit aggravated battery in peace?!

    YonahLevi
    YonahLevi
    11 years ago

    Where are the vigils for all the seventeen year old black boys and girls in our country who have been killed by other blacks? How many of them are household names? Why is a black life only of value when ended by a white person but not when ended by a black person?

    These are the questions that Pres. Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee and other race baiters need to answer.

    TexasJew
    TexasJew
    11 years ago

    #8 - Must be from Fondren.

    11 years ago

    I think its a solemn protest. And there is a first light to its own worth.

    Satmar
    Satmar
    11 years ago

    if zimmerman was a Jew going on trial for this story he would defiantly be found GUILTY like weberman, but since he isnt jewish he has a better chance of being acquitted