National Hoodie Day—Houston, Detroit and Cleveland
June 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Houston
Revolutionaries took a banner reading "We Are All Trayvon! The Whole Damn System is Guilty!" to a housing project in town. Many people wrote and spoke of their hopes for justice. One older man, who wrote in very large letters so that his name would stand out, fist-bumped "I'm with you" and made sure that his son also signed. A few people who expressed that "It's never gonna stop" engaged over why all these police murders are happening and how revolution can put an end to these racist murders. Ten copies of Revolution were sold, and people got a few dozen "Three Strikes" and "No More Generations…" posters and a few hundred palm cards to get out.
Detroit
From readers:
Two of us went to Detroit's Rosa Parks Bus Terminal on National Hoodie Day. There was significant rage and some determination to carry this fight on to the busses, into schools, and other places beyond today. People, especially the youth, enthusiastically put on hoodie stickers or saved them for school the next day. One man asked, "What about all the Trayvons who are murdered that we never hear about?" Others pointed out that this was nothing new; racists have been murdering Black people throughout the history of this country. As one man put it, "It's been open season on Black people for a long time." A young woman said it's not just black men who catch it, they shot a seven-year-old girl a couple of years ago (referring to the police murder of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones). An older Black man spoke about the lynchings of the 1930s and '40s. A few people bitterly pointed out that it's not just in the South that murders like Trayvon's go on. It happens everywhere.
There were a lot of youth at the terminal that day. They were angry at the murder of Trayvon and the ongoing attacks they face. Some spoke bitterly of all the times they've been harassed and hassled by the cops and drew the links between police and vigilantes like George Zimmerman. We had a large poster with the centerfold from Revolution newspaper with BAsics 1:13 that got a really positive response from the youth. One young man said, "That's us, condemned even before we are born. It's like they think we are all criminals just because we were born Black." A group of high-school-age youth said they will take the message about Trayvon and George Zimmerman's trial back to their school and on to Facebook to "spread the word." We distributed the BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! palm cards, consciously linking these outrages with revolution and BA.
Cleveland
From a reader:
About a dozen people gathered downtown in pouring rain carrying posters with "We Are All Trayvon! The Whole Damn System is Guilty!" and pictures of Trayvon Martin. Others joined in on the spot. Youth got stickers and some put their hoodies over their heads with fists raised. Motorists honked their horns. Some demonstrators made a connection between justice for Trayvon and the need for revolution by passing out BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! palm cards. Among those passing out palm cards was a relative of a person killed last November by Cleveland cops. The group marched to the "Justice" Center chanting "Trayvon did not have to die! We all know the reason why! The whole damn system is guilty!"
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