Ten years ago this past week, Trayvon Martin—a young man of 17 years with his whole life ahead of him—was killed by a white supremacist vigilante, George Zimmerman, for walking through a Florida neighborhood wearing a hoodie. The acquittal of Zimmerman sparked a rebirth of the movement against white supremacy. People recalled the brutal lynching of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi 57 years earlier and vowed, “We don’t want our children and grandchildren fighting the same thing 57 years from now.”

Over these past ten years, people have rallied, braved police batons and murders by fascists, and raised questions about not only the mass incarceration and police terror directed against Black and other oppressed people but also the fundamental nature of this society and what needs to be done to change it. Look at the pictures accompanying this reflection and think back.

Think back to the rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police murder of Michael Brown, that spread throughout the country for a solid month of protest. Think back to Rise Up October, where 6,000 people from around the country, including the families of many victims of police murder and brutality, gathered in a powerful protest in 2015. Think back to 2020, when the entire nation was convulsed in protest after the truly horrifying murder of George Floyd played out on video… and after the word spread of the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and the “no-knock” execution of Breonna Taylor in Louisville. As the rebellions and uprisings grew more powerful and broader, despite savage police repression and beatings… as people began to raise their heads and ask “why” and explore how to end it… this system was truly rocked.

Not Just “More of the Same”

Yet ten years later, this oppression still suffocates society and exacts its murderous toll. But it’s not just “more of the same.” Something changed on the other side of the divide too. The gulf grew larger… and the other side hardened.

George Zimmerman became a fascist hero, a rallying point for white supremacists determined to “stand their ground”—to not just keep the white supremacist institutions but to go on a reactionary offensive against every concession that had been made in the 60 years before Zimmerman murdered Trayvon. Donald Trump became president. Armed right-wing “militia”—that is, fascist thugs and killers—began to turn out in force to intimidate, attack and sometimes kill protestors. Now it’s becoming illegal to even teach about slavery—except to say that “well, that’s all gone… and it wasn’t all that bad anyway.”

And ten years after the murder of Trayvon Martin, almost to the day, another vigilante an entire continent away, in Portland, Oregon, is alleged by witnesses to have killed a protestor against the very same white supremacist system and society that murdered Trayvon Martin—this time a 60-year-old white woman, Brandy “June” Knightly.

These fascists aim to drag things back not only to the days of Emmett Till, but still earlier; as Bob Avakian (BA) has incisively pointed out, there’s a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today. As Bob Avakian has also written:

[G]oing deeper, why is this terror and murder necessary for this system, in order to ensure its “order” and its ongoing functioning? The answer is that, from the beginning of this country, white supremacy has been poured into the foundation and built into the institutions and the ongoing functioning of this system. Specifically with regard to Black people, the centuries of oppression they have suffered—from slavery days to the days of Jim Crow segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror, to the present time, with the continuing systematic discrimination against Black people, in every part of society (employment, housing, education, health care, and on and on)—all this has resulted in a situation where masses of Black people today, and in particular youth, have been robbed of a means for a decent life, with many maintained in conditions of desperate poverty and deprivation. This, again, is not simply because those who are in the seats of power and deciding government policy are racist (though that is true of most of them). It is fundamentally because of the nature of the system itself and the historically-evolved requirements and dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism.

In that piece, BA goes on to break down how white supremacy was knit into the fabric of the system and the whole society, and how this is manifesting ever more sharply. The brute fact remains that unless this murderous system is overthrown through an actual revolution, involving millions of people of all nationalities, and until the white supremacist order of today is replaced with an entirely new economy, an entirely new political structure, and whole new ways of people relating to each other, all geared to ending all oppression and exploitation—then this white supremacist madness will continue, in ever more grotesque and even genocidal ways.

There is something else in the equation, too. The sharpening divide through society, and especially at the top, over how to handle this and other severe conflicts confronting this system—the oppression of women and gender oppression more generally, the destruction of the environment, the worldwide immigration crisis, to name just some—is part of the fact that, as Bob Avakian has said:

The crisis and deep divisions in society can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means.

With all this, what is urgently needed, what is possible—and what must be actively, tirelessly worked for, in order for there to truly be a positive outcome to all this—is a fundamentally different alignment in the country as a whole: a Repolarization that is favorable for, and brings forward the necessary forces for, Revolution—a real revolution to overthrow this system, and bring into being a radically different and much better system. (From SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Division, The Looming Possibility of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap for This Revolution)

This IS one of those rare times when revolution could be made in a country like this. The strategy to make that revolution—to organize millions and to go on to meet and defeat the forces of repression and violence that press down on people—exists. The sweeping vision and detailed blueprint for the remaking of that society exists. The leadership for such a revolution exists—in Bob Avakian. And the force committed to following that leadership and leading others to make that revolution is here: the revcoms.

Ten years after the unjust and awful death of Trayvon Martin: what will YOU do?