How Trayvon Martin’s Death Launched a New Generation of Black Activism

[Jefferson23]

A host of new groups are reviving the grassroots fight for racial equality.

Mychal Denzel Smith
August 27, 2014



On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American 17-year-old walking home from a 7-Eleven. What The Washington Post and other media outlets had dubbed “the trial of the century” was over, with a deeply unsettling verdict. In the fifteen months between Trayvon’s death and the beginning of the trial, people across the country had taken to the streets, as well as to newspapers, television and social media, to decry the disregard for young black lives in America. For them—for us—this verdict was confirmation.

A group of 100 black activists, ranging in age from 18 to 35, had gathered in Chicago that same weekend. They had come together at the invitation of Cathy J. Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics, and her organization, the Black Youth Project. Launched in 2004, the group was born as a research project to study African-American youth; in the decade since then, Cohen has turned the BYP into an activist organization. The plan for this meeting was to discuss movement building beyond electoral politics. Young black voters turned out in record numbers in the 2008 and ‘12 elections: 55 percent of black 18-to-24-year-olds voted in 2008, an 8 percent increase from 2004, and while a somewhat smaller number—49 percent—voted in 2012, they still outpaced their white counterparts. But how would young black voters hold those they had put in office accountable? And what were their demands?

This group, coming together under the banner Black Youth Project 100 (“BYP100” for short), was tasked with figuring that out. As with any large gathering, people disagreed, cliques were formed, and tensions began to mount. The organizers struggled to build consensus within this diverse group of academics, artists and activists. And then George Zimmerman was acquitted. The energy in the room changed.

“A moment of trauma can oftentimes present you with an opportunity to do something about the situation to prevent that trauma from happening again,” said Charlene Carruthers, one the activists at the conference.

in full: http://www.thenation.com/article/181404/how-trayvon-martins-death-launched-new-generation-black-activism

[Blue_Tires]

1. The sad part is it shouldn't have taken that case for us to be spurred into action...

But I'm grateful so many more are "awake" now...

[BlueCaliDem]

2. This is a very, very goood thing.

Since the Civil Rights Movement, it was as if young Blacks had been lulled into a false sense of won equal rights when, all along, that wasn't the case at all. They should have known better. Republicans/Conservatives are notorious sore-losers, and they were vehemently against equal rights for Black people - and they haven't stopped trying to undo the CRA the moment it passed as law.

Unfortunately, young Blacks didn't get the memo. They had begun to act as if they were equal in a society that was systematically racist and anti-Black. It resulted in curtailing their hard-fought-for and precious right to vote (and right to having laws passed and signed into law that would benefit them, not enslave them again). The offenses Blacks were being arrested for were actions their White peers would never be arrested for.

The Black youth have ignored the warnings of their parents about how important it is avoid any reason for authorities (and authorities are always looking for reasons) to take away their precious right to vote through prejudiced police forces that have shown that they handle White arrestees differently than Black arrestees.

Compare how LEOs handled the following two cases.

Michael Paquette of Santa Cruz, a 27-year-old man who stabbed a police officer in the knee with a pocket knife and was going to stab another in the face - and is still alive today. He was tasered, not shot, and the press excused his behavior because Paquette was reportedly "suicidal". This is a strategy to generate sympathy for Parquette.

Then there was Michael Brown's tragic case: a teen who was unarmed, with hands up, and surrendering to a police officer who was equipped with a taser, but who chose to shoot-to-kill Michael Brown instead, emptying his clip. Today, as his family grieves his unnecessary death, the press and RW-"journalists" continue to vilify him as they work hard to make him appear like a thug. This is America's media modus operandi when it comes to extrajudicial executions of Black people: generate White anger (still the largest demographic in the U.S.) against "another Black thug" in order to garner empathy and understanding for the White LEO who executed him in the street.

All I can say is, it's high time that Blacks recognize there is a problem and that they need to work toward real - not propagated - equality in American society if they want the unfair incarceration, murders, extrajudicial executions, and racial profiling against their race to stop.