Socialist Party USA

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 this 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 civil disobedience should be escalated until Zimmerman is tried before a court of law on charges of murder. 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!

Socialist Party USA 339 Lafayette St. #303 New York, NY 10012