On February 26, 2012, 17- year-old Trayvon Martin was profiled, stalked, and shot dead by self-appointed neighborhood watch “captain” George Zimmerman in a residential complex in Sanford, Florida. Six weeks later he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder with the state attorney announcing the charges live in a televised press conference. The case, which rested on Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, made headlines across the nation, with President Obama even weighing.
Regretfully, soon after Obama’s statement, an all too familiar and dangerous narrative began to unfold in both mainstream and social media. Trayvon was initially described as the victim of an overzealous wanna-be cop, but cultural and political factions soon developed which began to paint him an incorrigible teen who GASP! had been in trouble in school. Controversy blazed about which picture represented the “real” Trayvon, the initial photo showing a baby-faced 13-year-old Travyon or an older Trayvon donning a white hoodie – hoodie = thug. Conversely, Zimmerman was now held as a hero who was just standing his ground. Many asked, what about Trayvon’s right to stand his ground against a grown man clad in plain clothes following him at night? What about his right to be scared? None of it mattered. On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges.
San Francisco Bay Area activist, Alicia Garza, had been closely following the Zimmerman case. Previously, Garza had been active in her native San Francisco working hard to halt gentrification efforts in a majority-Black neighborhood. She had also been a voice calling for justice in the extrajudicial killings of unarmed Black people including Oscar Grant who was shot and killed by BART police while he lay face down, compliant. The night of the verdict announcement at 7:14 pm, stunned and enraged by the Zimmerman acquittal, Garza grabbed her phone and wrote an impassioned tweet which ended with the hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter. In her book: The Purpose of Power, Garza describes the reaction to her tweet:
I woke up the next day and found that everything exploded. Protests were being called for across the country… My post has been shared and liked hundreds of times. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag had begun to circulate all over Twitter and Facebook… Hundreds of thousands of people across the country would take to the streets over the next few weeks… In New York, they would fill the Brooklyn Bridge with protestors and signs that read BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Alicia Garza
Today, Black Lives Matter is a part of our lexicon. It’s ubiquitous. From posters to t-shirts to yard signs. Last summer’s George Floyd protests saw signs emblazoned with the declaration in over 60 countries and on all seven continents (Source: Wikipedia). As Garza put it years later in an interview: “It’s part of our [cultural] DNA”. The Summer of 2020 saw it even used by companies to shore up their social justice bonafides. Seeing Black Lives Matter used by commercial entities filled me with a certain pride mixed with dread. I mean once the mainstream gets hold of something, it tends to lose its meaning. I choose to use Black Lives Matter as a declaration. A rallying cry. One that is, sadly, infuriatingly, still needed.
Trayvon’s death came as a result of the same forces that deem Black skin a crime to be controlled or snuffed out. His life was deemed irrelevant by a legal system built upon and entrenched in white supremacy. A system where Black boys don’t get to be boys. Where every mistake can and will be used against you not just in the court of law, but in the court of public opinion. A system where all too often stand your ground does not apply to Black folk. Deep, exhausted sigh. It’s enough to make you wanna holla! Yet, In spite of all this, we still declare: Black Lives Matter.
Rest in power, Trayvon.
Stephanie Edmond-Myers
