Postings from Sanford:

The Trial of Trayvon's Killer
The People's Demand for Justice
Voices from Goldsboro

by Li Onesto | June 30, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

It's June 9, 2013, the day before the start of the trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in 2012. I'm down here in Sanford, Florida with a crew that includes people from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and revolutionaries. It's Sunday and this morning people had gone out to Goldsboro, the historic Black community in Sanford. They took out two big banners to one of the churches. One with the BAsics 1:13 quote from Bob Avakian: "No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that." Another has two drawings, one of Trayvon Martin and one of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black kid killed by white racists in 1955. As people came out of the church lots of them stopped to sign this banner and talk about the upcoming trial and the need to fight for justice for Trayvon.

Several people had left their names to be contacted, to get involved and talk more. So we decided to try and call some of them right away to interview them. One of them answered the phone right away and agreed to meet us on a corner right close to the church. We'd only pulled up and gotten out of the car and been waiting for about 5 minutes when we spotted a car zooming pretty fast up the road. The car comes to a screeching stop and Louise jumps out and I can tell she's already in a hurry. But she also wants to talk. She quickly tells us how she was born in Sanford, how she moved away after her mom died, but then moved back and has been living here in Goldsboro for about 10 years. She says:

"The protest [last year] was for Trayvon Martin. But everybody in that protest has they own story to tell, they just hadn't been heard. But I'm telling you my story. Please hear me loud and clear. All that is going to stop, the hatred, the racism, the discrimination. We are all equal. We are all beautiful and we are all human. We are in this together. This is for humankind. It's humankind... They heard our cries. They heard his mom. That was a painful feeling. That could have been my child. The operator told him to leave him alone. He should have been charged with not listening to that law enforcement person from the beginning. He had over 30 something calls of a suspicious people in his neighborhood and they were all Black, not one of them were white."

We actually want to talk more with Louise, but just as quickly as she came, she announces that she's got to leave, jumps back in her car and zooms away.

"No Deals"

Earlier, driving through the neighborhood we had noticed that some people had put different signs up in their windows about Trayvon. Now, as we start walking down the road a ways we see a house with a big sign in front that says, "No Deals—Justice for Trayvon." So we walk up to the door. An older man is sitting behind the screen door and I tell him that we were wanting to talk to someone about the sign outside and he says, "We put that sign up there because of the hypocrisy going on and enough is enough." Then another man, Donald, who is the son of the older gentleman, comes out to talk. He tells us that he was out at the protests last year to demand Zimmermans's arrest.

"It would be a good thing if we had justice for the death of that child, yes and going forward. I hope the young man pay for what he did.... It was a contentious effort going through the community to try and get support because I thought that the police wasn't doing their job as they should have. Instead of letting him go they should have held him and brought him to full justice and let the court decide, not just them taking it on their effort to bring bring about a decision that he was rightfully, we should say, justified in the shooting."

We ask Donald if he knew that people around the whole country, like in New York, Chicago and in California also protested, demanding justice for Trayvon and he says:

"Yes, it was all over. I think that was very, very good that people took up the thoughts, from what was stated about the child, that he was going back home to his father's home, and this guy followed him unjustly, I would say. If you want to see if he was an intruder in your community, you would have just stayed back and see where he goes, instead of confronting him. That would be my doing if I was a community server. And I would have seen where he would go and then people would come, officers would come. Then all this wouldn't be about, you see. But any time a person leave home with a gun under the influence of being, what you would say, where they have the right to carry a gun—everybody that leaves home with a gun, they have bad intentions, I think, cause if you had good intentions you wouldn't need no gun."

I ask Donald to talk about his "No Deals" sign and he says:

"No deals? I mean, he should be justified for what he done. Don't give him no deals at all. He should be justified, and by justified I mean give him the appropriate sentence. I really think that he murdered that child, it was no self defense. He really murdered that child. Why would you being an adult, accost a child, you know what I mean? Why would you confront a child? And on top of that, you are having a gun and you know that you got the gun and he don't. And you're the one that followed him. And yet still they're trying to portray that child as being the aggressor, come on. That's what they're trying to portray, but I don't think so. He was what, 17? He's was just a typical child, that goes through changes or what not, even though he might have acted out in school and got suspended, so his mother sent him to his father, someone who could maybe straighten him out.... Hopefully we'll get a just verdict."

"We all organized it..."

By now the crew has arrived in Goldsboro and has started marching through the streets with the banners and chanting, "Trayvon Martin did not have to die, we all know the reason why.... The whole system is guilty!"

It's a really hot and humid day, close to 100 degrees with threatening thunder clouds. But there's quite a few people outside, trying to catch the brief snatches of sun before the rain. And the ringing of chants bring more people outside to check it out. We walk up to talk to one young woman who has just been talking to one of the crew. She's a college student and says she not only went to the protests last year but organized others to go as well:

"I went downtown to the rallies, I supported it. I went there because I thought it was unfair how a Black kid got shot and nothing was done about it, there was no arrest made about it or anything. So I thought that was pretty sad. So I thought just joining that would make a difference so people can see that it was wrong. A lot of us went down there all together. I was in high school at the time so we all went there as a group. It was Seminole High School. It was good. Probably about 300 or 400 of us went down there, there was quite a few of us. We all organized it and went down there. It was a couple, me and my friends, we did it all together. It was fun and we partnered up with the Boys and Girls Club too so that was really fun."

When we ask her if she has done any organizing leading up to the trial she says, "No, not really because I thought nothing was really going to happen about it every since last year then all of a sudden I saw this [what the crew is doing] and I thought it was cool because my cousin came in yesterday with one of the yellow stickers [announcing the National Hoodie Day] . He came from the store and he said that some people were giving out stickers and everything and then he brought it back to the house. I was like, cool, someone still cares. I was suprised to see anything actually being done. I heard that things were gonna start happening when the trial started but I didn't see anything until now."

Bicycle messengers

The whole time we're walking around I keep seeing this one guy who's riding his bike up and down the road. He's watching everything. Sometimes he comes by fast, sometimes slow. Finally he comes riding up to us, slows down and stops. He's a man of little words but he points to the fliers and stickers that we have and then points to the basket that he has attached to his handlebars. He lets us know that he can help get them out in the neighborhood. So we give him some stacks and off he goes.

In fact, bikes seem to be a big way that people get around here in Goldsboro. And the next person we talk to is a gracious-looking woman, riding a bike, wearing a flowing white dress. She tells us she's 50 years old, a mother of five children, that lived in Goldsboro for over two decades. Like almost everyone else we've talked to today, she had been at the protests last year and says:

"I think that justice should be done. And I think that that could have been any one of our kids. You know because he didn't have to die like that. When they told him to stand off like that he should have stood off. That's how I feel about it, it's very sad, I have never lost a kid. But I could feel, you know, about it. I would never wish it on anybody. Everyday, kids just dying for nothing. They innocent, there are innocent bystanders, there are drive by shootings everyday. And people should be put away for that.

"What the kid did in the past that ain't got nothing to do with him dying. Number two, I don't like the way they, all that publicity about him smoking... that's wrong, that's hurting the parents. they really trying to hurt the case, is what I think. They trying to make it like he's the criminal, like he did this and he did that. He [Zimmerman] was bigger than that boy. I really do think that, the way I feel about it, that was his voice, a boy screaming out for mercy, that's what I think. He had the gun, so he's downright guilty."

I ask her whether she expected that people around the country would take up this fight and she says:

"No, I really didn't. Sanford was just always a little quiet dot. Nobody know nothing about Sanford, they don't know nothing about Sanford. Now, Sanford is known everywhere. So it's worldwide now.... I feel like this, if justice don't get done, it's gonna get worser.... a lot of people are bitter about this."

"The justice system is really fucked up"

The crew of revolutionaries is having a discussion with a group of guys who are sitting around in front of their house so we decide to join in. Afterwards we interview one of the men who starts off right away talking about why people took up the slogan, "We are all Trayvon." He says:

"Because, honestly, it happens everywhere and it could have been any body's son. Peoples said, We are all Trayvon Martin, stereotypes still exist. Sad to say. People still stereotype—the police, the way you dress, the way you walk, unfortunately, that's sad to say, but it is what it is. I got a college degree but I like hanging in the hood, you know what I mean. It keeps me humble, it keeps me grounded. It doesn't make me a bad person, the way I dress, that I hang out. But people stereotype me for it. You talk to some white people they don't even acknowledge you.... in some neighbhorhoods you feel out of place, they look at you and they just see a Black man, they don't care. It's sad to say, it's 2013, but people still have that way of thinking.

'I mean that we need to send a message to the justice system that people are tired of being taken advantage of, that would send a big message to them because the justice system is really fucked up, it really is, it has it's priorities wrong....It's like Zimmerman said... "these people always get away with it..." or something like that, it's a racist statement and that's how they feel about us, you Black people. What about you crazy white people."

We ask him to talk about what it's like living in this neighbhorhood and in particular to comment on the cops—since we have been hearing a lot about how the new Black chief of police in Sanford has been doing a lot to regain the trust of the people, especially in Goldsboro—like for instance, organizing the younger kids into junior police type clubs. He tells us:

"I done have my run ins with the police, I've had a Black cop, like I said, cops period. They harass me every time they saw me. They stopped me one time, ok, I had a marijuana stick on me, so what? You got me, give me a little ticket, I go to court. But every time they stop me they search my car, they search me. Everybody has their run ins. They harass everybody. It's a big form of control. That's what they trying to do. At night time they got unmarked cars. If it was night time now they would pull up and stop you because they would say we were selling drugs. They just harassing people. People hanging out in the street."

The Old Jim Crow... and New Hope

Since we've been down here, torential downpours has been coming down throughout each day. But luckily, tonight the rain is staying away for our our barbeque and video showing of an excerpt from the movie, Bob Avakian Speaks—Revolution: Nothing Less! One of the woman who had really helped out during the BAsics bus tour last summer is hosting the gathering and we set up on her big front porch. We're all sitting around talking and Denise, one of the older woman in the neighborhood starts telling me a very heavy story about her experience during the old days of Jim Crow:

"The first time I heard about black and white places—Black people couldn't go in places where white people could go—and my mom she would tell me, don't worry about it, I'll tell you about it [later]. So I was like, OK, so I just let it go. So we went to the bathroom, we had to go into another bathroom, a dingy, dirty place. I didn't feel good about it, by me being 11-years-old. I didn't think nothing about it then. But when we got ready to eat, I went to go into the [front] door and my mom pulled me away from the door and told me, no you can't go in there. So we had to go around back behind to a little window just about that high and that wide to order food. So I said, 'Momma, why we got to some back here to get our food?' And she said, 'Well, it's not right for us to go inside.' I'm like, 'Well, momma, other people's in there, why can't we go in there?' And so she said, 'No we can't go in there.' So she said, 'I'll tell you when we get in the truck.' I'm like ok. So she got the food and they put it in a styrofoam container, almost threw it at us. And I'm standing there, an 11-year-old child and I'm very curious, wondering why they doing us like that, when they not doing the white people like that. And we got back on the truck and I start asking my mom questions and she told me what you just witnessed, we can't do things like those peoples can. And I'm like why? We all the same peoples, ain't we? And she said, well, we just can't do that, we can't do what they do. And I want to know why we can't do what they do. And she never did tell me. When she told me what had happened a long time ago afterwards, I was up in my teens before I found out what was what, why it was like that...

"It took me a while to get to understand what had happened and why it was happening. Because I'm not used to being around people that I couldn't laugh and talk with because I had a white friend. Me and her was the same age and we was always like this [close]. So when we get together and play we always played like we was sisters and we never had no problems... I never experienced this racist stuff [with her]. I'm 73-years-old now and I could never see none of that and I could never understand that. And I'm grown now and I still don't understand that and I don't like it."

Later Denise sits down with everyone else for a showing of part of the Revolution Nothing Less video. The crew has set it up so that it's projected off the wall of the house so people are sitting on the porch and standing in front of the house to watch. The next day, we stop by very early in the morning to pick Denise up to go to the courthouse. She has been very determined to be out there for the first day of Zimmerman's trial.

I see Denise one last time before I leave town. We stop by to talk and she tells me what she thought of the Revolution Nothing Less video:

"I think it was nice, very nice. Because a lot of the stuff, well all of the stuff that he was talking about it's good, it's really good. He was speaing about Trayvon and I think I heard a little about Emmett in there and that's good, that's very good. I like listening and I like looking at stuff like that too because when you're telling the truth about something, I'm all for the truth. If you got to go around and turn around this way and turn around that way and lie about this way and lie about this and all that then well you go ahead on cause I ain't got nothing to do that, I'm not going to be with you on that. But that was good, that was very good."

I ask her what about BA's message that we need revolution, nothing less and she says:

"Right, revolution, that is good, that was really good. We need that. That's why I'm saying we need that out there. We need all of that. That should be saying, about the message about, what he was saying, it should be speaking out at the courthouse. And I think it would be more better, well, I can't put the words to it like it's supsosed to be, but it should be more, understanding and letting the peoples hear what really going on and really what's happening and what need to be happening in this country, in this world because it's stuff going so much like that. Like the same thing what's done happen here, what's going on here, they need to open up their eyes and see more of what's going on."

Did she feel like what BA was saying connected with her life experience?

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I was trying to get to, something like that. It really do, it really need to be, um hum, that was really good. It's just so much, I don't know, so much hatred going on in this world. And it need to come to a conclusion to people that need to understand and need to open up their eyes and need to listen to what really need to listen to the words that they're saying and the words of god. They don't listen to nothing. You tell them things and they take it the way they want to go with it the way they want to go with it."

And then I ask Denise whether the idea of getting rid of the whole system, of bringing into being a whole different worl, gives her hope and she says:

"Oh yes, it give me a lot of hope. Because that's been my prayer, hope is in my prayers at all times. Because if we had more wisdom and more hope, I believe that this would be a better world, it would be a better place. Because hope is one of the things that we don't have anymore. we just go along and don't think nothing of it. But hope and wisdom is two of the things that we really need in here, other than anything else. Those are two of the main things that we really need. That's all I can say about it."

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