The shooting murder of black teenager Trayvon Martin by white and Hispanic community vigilante George Zimmerman, which took place exactly 10 years ago in the United States, laid the foundations for a new wave of black political activism based on a hashtag as simple as it was impactful: Black Lives Matter (BLM), or black lives matter.
The movement for black lives shook up the debate on racism and gun violence in the country, highlighted the criminalizing stigmas that weighed (and still weighs) on the identity of young black people and mobilized thousands of people on social media and on the streets around racial justice and social transformation.
As a pivot for the BLM, Martin’s assassination is also the genesis of important changes in the US political, social and cultural landscape. It called into question the institutional racism of the justice system. And it engaged public figures both inside and outside of American institutional politics, raising the profile of both anti-racist and far-right white supremacist groups.
Between actions and reactions, the series of events that began a decade ago even contributed to the election of former President Donald Trump in 2016, in a campaign marked by conflicts between protesters who chanted “Black Lives Matter” and those who demanded “All Lives Matter”. ” (all lives matter, in English).
It all started on the night of February 26, 2012. Martin, then 17, was staying with his father’s girlfriend, in a gated community in Sanford, Florida. He went out to buy candy and never came back.
He was walking through the streets of the condominium, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, when he noticed that his steps were being followed by Zimmerman, who was in a car, armed with a 9 mm pistol, and who was part of a community surveillance system in the neighborhood.
Zimmerman called the police to report the presence of a suspect. “There have been some break-ins recently and now there’s another suspicious guy in the neighborhood,” he told the clerk, who asked to identify whether the boy was black. The vigilante confirmed it and said, “Looks like he’s up to something.”
Zimmerman ignored the policeman’s plea to stop chasing the boy. A few minutes later, neighbors called 911 when they heard screams in the street and then a shot — the only one fired at the crime scene, which hit Martin squarely in the chest. After giving evidence, Zimmerman was released.
A month later, thousands of people gathered in Union Square, New York, to demand justice for the young black man’s death. It had been 40 years since the USA had seen such a mobilization around the racial issue.
Among the protesters — most of whom wore a hood, like Martin when he was killed — were pop stars such as Beyoncé and Jay Z, a rapper who years later financed a series on the case, under the advice of the young man’s own family, entitled “Rest in Power” (Rest in power, in English, a pun on the expression “rest in peace”, rest in peace).
“Our son was not committing any crime. Our son is your son. This is not about blacks and whites, this is about right and wrong,” Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, spoke during the protests. And then-President Barack Obama expressed his condolences to the family: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” The protests pressured the authorities to investigate the case, which ended up in the courts.
Laying the groundwork for a new mobilization was Zimmerman’s acquittal of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges, after a 16-hour jury on July 13, 2013, that sparked a movement for racial justice articulated via Internet.
The verdict sparked protests across the country and prompted activist Alicia Garza of Oakland, Calif., to write a “Love Letter to Black People” on her Facebook profile. The text ends with a sad “our lives matter”.
The post went viral. And activist Patricia Cullors, a friend of Garza’s who worked in the field of penal abolitionism, began to mark all mentions of the Trayvon Martin case with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter.
The following week, another activist linked to the duo, Opal Tometi, director of an immigrant rights NGO in New York, bought the domain www.blacklivesmatter.com to start a national campaign, in the wake of other major online joint ventures such as Occupy Wall Street. and the Arab Spring.
The group went on to organize protests for each murder of a black person by police or armed vigilantes, encouraging the creation of local BLM cells. And there were many of those deaths in 2013 and 2014. Jonathan Ferrel, 24, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Renisha McBride, 19, in Dearbon Heights, Michigan. Dontre Hamilton, 31, in Milwalkee. Eric Garner, 43, in New York. John Crawford, 22, in Ohio. Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Missouri — a case that generated days of protests and fires, followed globally.
Years later, the murder of George Floyd would go beyond American borders, generating anti-racist demonstrations in various parts of the world.
“We were living in a period when the death of young black men had become so banal that you had to shake people up and remind them, ‘Hey, our lives matter!’ sheet Opal Tometi. “Our movements acted so effectively that things started to change, and the conservatives and the far right despaired, and elected this type. [Donald Trump]”.
During Donald Trump’s campaign, Zimmerman returned to the scene. Boasting the flag of the Confederate states (symbol of states against the abolition of slavery in the US) as an image of his profile on social networks, Trayvon Martin’s tormentor announced the sale of his 9mm pistol on an American weapons website.
The ad specified that the weapon had been used in “legitimate defense” against Trayvon Martin. “It’s an opportunity to acquire a piece of American history,” he announced. “And the funds obtained will be used in the fight against the violence of the BLM against security agents […] and against Hillary Clinton’s anti-gun rhetoric.”
In addition to the conservative backlash that has spread across the country, of which Zimmerman’s announcement is an icon, Martin’s assassination and the movement he sparked have changed the way the sad recurrence of violent deaths of black people is viewed.
If, in 2013, the judge of the court that acquitted George Zimmerman did not even accept the mention of the racial issue in the file, last week the Justice convicted three white men of hate crime who persecuted and killed the young black Ahmaud Arbery, who practiced race in a mostly white neighborhood. The jury concluded that Arbery was killed because he was black.
The path to this understanding also passes through the death of Trayvon Martin.
