Angered by the shocking death last month of a black teenager in Florida and upset with the statute that the shooter invoked to avoid prosecution, more than 1,000 people flooded the area around the John A. Wilson Building on Saturday afternoon in a call for justice.
The event was the latest in a national series of rallies in memory of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was gunned down February 26 not far from his home in Sanford, Fla. by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch patrolman who felt threatened by the teen’s presence. Zimmerman, 28, acted under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows people to use lethal force in public when they believe their lives to be in imminent danger.
Martin was found carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea.
“We come as one but we stand as 10,000,” said Deon Jones, a member of advisory neighborhood commission 3D, invoking “Our Grandmothers,” a poem by Maya Angelou.
Jones, the other speakers and most in the crowd wore hooded sweatshirts, just as Martin had worn the night he was slain. Some also toted bags of Skittles. (Other rallies around the country in Martin’s memory have been dubbed “Million Hoodie Marches.”)
The Rev. E. Gail Anderson Holness, a candidate for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council, followed Jones at the microphone on the crowded steps of the Wilson Building.
“We’re not going to take it any more,” she said, wearing a Howard University sweatshirt. “We’re sick and tired of being sick and tired of our black boys being an endangered species.” She also closed her remarks with a reference to Michael Jackson’s song “Man in the Mirror.”
The rally was organized within a period of a few days by three D.C. area women outraged Martin’s death and the fact that Zimmerman, who grew up in Manassas, Va., has in the month since the shooting not been charged with a crime. Megan Goffney, Maliaka Melay and Heather Raspberry, standing out in brightly colored sweatshirts with horizontal pinstripes, coordinated the event over Facebook early last week, originally expecting a crowd of perhaps a few hundred. By week’s end, it was apparent a much larger number of people would turn out.
“This could have been my son,” Joe Madison, a host on Sirius XM Radio, told the crowd. “My sons fit the profile because they walk home from school.” Madison also asked people to observe April 10 as “National Hoodie Day.”
Madison and other speakers weighed in on comments made last week by Geraldo Rivera, who claimed Martin’s choice of apparel was as much responsible for his death as the man who pulled the trigger. The Fox News host’s boorish analysis was promptly rebuked, including by Rivera’s son.
Alan Williams, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, pledged he would not let Zimmerman go unpunished.
“On behalf of the Florida House of Representatives, justice will be served,” he said.
Last week, the chief of police in Sanford temporarily stepped down from his job and the local district attorney recused himself from investigating Martin’s death. Gov. Rick Scott has appointed a special prosecutor, and it is possible the U.S. Justice Department could charge Zimmerman with a hate crime. (Before shooting Martin, Zimmerman made several calls to 911 complaining about the teen, including one in which he might have used the epithet “fucking coon” to describe Martin.)
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown also made a brief appearance, saying, “I believe justice will be served because I believe in a mighty god.”
Under a thick, cloud-filled sky that occasionally pelted them with rain, the hundreds in attendance ranged in emotion from angry to prayerful. The Rev. Tony Lee, a pastor in Hillcrest Heights, Md. who served as the day’s emcee, encouraged the crowd to join hands as he delivered a homily at the end.
As the crowd was dispersing, the comedian and activist Dick Gregory made a surprise appearance on the Wilson Building steps. His tribute to Martin, however, veered into the bizarre at times. At several points, he suggested to the crowd that medical examiners conducting autopsies frequently rob decedents of their internal organs for illegal gains.
Gregory’s meandering remarks aside, the crowd left emotionally charged by the many speeches and the diversity of people who participated. And more events remembering Martin are planned for D.C. A march is planned outside the Justice Department’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW for midday, and a candlelight vigil marking the one-month anniversary of Martin’s death will take place tonight at 7 p.m. at the intersection of 14th Street and Park Road NW in Columbia Heights.
