George Zimmerman used a 9 millimeter gun to murder a 17 year old young man
named Trayvon Martin. Martin was unarmed, wielding only a bag of skittles
he had just purchased from a convenience store. Eyewitnesses say that
Zimmerman is guilty. The 911 tapes say that Zimmerman is guilty. Police
surveillance tapes showing a calm Zimmerman after the shooting say that he
is guilty. Even Zimmerman admits that he is guilty of shooting Martin.
Despite all of this, Zimmerman is not in jail, he is not being questioned
and he is not facing the wrath of a criminal justice system that has been
used against so many young African-American males. Trayvon Martin is dead
- left only as a symbol of the oppression faced by young African-Americans
all across America that makes them targets for homicidal racists, the
police and the prison system.
Trayvon Martin faced the reality that haunts millions of young
African-Americans – the assumption of guilt because of racial profiling.
The trigger for Zimmerman’s racial violence was Martin’s hoodie – a
symbol, in his mind, that converted the young man from a fellow resident
of Sanford, Florida into a threat. Armed with a gun, a racist motivation
and a Florida “Stand your Ground” law that encourages vigilante violence,
Zimmerman felt empowered to end the life of Trayvon Martin.
Many commentators focus on the 911 call that Zimmerman made when he
spotted Martin. The operator on the call instructed him not to pursue the
young man and to wait for the police. If only, these commentators say,
Zimmerman had waited for the police to arrive everything would have been
fine. This begs the question of what fate Trayvon Martin might have faced
had the police showed up.
If trends around the country are any indication, Martin might have faced
just as much of a threat from the police as he did from Zimmerman. The
assumption of guilt when it comes to young African-American males drives
police policies all across the country. There’s no better example than
the
Stop and Frisk policy enforced by the New York Police Department (NYPD).
In just two years, 2010 and 2011, 1.2 million people were stopped by the
NYPD. Although African-Americans make up only 25% of the overall
population in the City they were targeted for more than 50% of the stops.
The result of this policy has reverberated across the nation leading to
police abuses, deaths and institutional fuel for the idea that every young
African-American is a threat to society.
Such police abuses are just one aspect of a larger social policy based on
institutionalized racism that centers on the mass incarceration of people
of color. The prison system has become the primary tool used to
discipline urban areas that have been devastated by neoliberal economics.
Today, more than 6 million people are under some form of “correctional
supervision” in America. This includes more than 50% of African-American
males who do not hold a high school diploma. Such a stunning level of
incarceration is a direct result of the combination of an economy that
serves the interests of the 1% and a society with a deeply embedded racial
mindsets and racist institutions.
Had, Trayvon Martin escaped from the violence doled out by an individual
racist with a gun, he would still have had to navigate through this racial
minefield of 21st century America. Socialism does not have all the
answers to such complex problems. Yet, a democratic socialist society
would allow us to change some of the questions. For instance, a full
employment economy would relieve some of the terrible burden created by
long-term unemployment. Free and open education would begin to create
spaces for equal opportunity. Radical democracy at our worksites and in
the creation of public budgets might give us a chance to curb things like
the environmental racism and unequal access to public services that
capitalism breeds. More simply, a socialism for the 21st century must
root itself in an understanding of how race and class work together to
produce oppression.
Today, we must continue the push to get some amount of justice for Trayvon
Martin. George Zimmerman must be arrested and prosecuted for his crime.
To allow him to continue to walk free is an outrage that will only
encourage further acts of racial violence. Pressure through mass protests
and civildisobedience should be escalated until Zimmerman is behind bars
for life. Energy from this movement can spill over into larger efforts to
end racist police policies such as Stop and Frisk and feed into a broader
movement to challenge the disciplinary power of the prison system.
Consider the murder of Trayvon Martin as a challenge to all people who are
interested in creating a democratic society. Capitalism has flourished
through maintaining a variety of forms of racial domination. Whether it’s
chattel slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, or mass incarceration, it’s
clear that we live in society based on racism. A democratic revolution
aims at destroying these racist institutions and replacing them with
institutions based on socialist values of solidarity, compassion and
respect. Such a society would value the potential held by a young person
like Trayvon Martin instead of seeing him as a target for racial fear,
social suspicion and acts of violence.
Justice for Trayvon Martin! Build a Movement Against Racism and Class
Oppression!
