Why trayvon martin matters

The African-American teenager's death at the hands of a neighborhood watch volunteer spurred a movement and gave rise to a rallying cry that resonates with many today: " BlackLivesMatter. Martin, 17, was carrying iced tea and candy as he walked from a convenience store to the home of his father's fiancee in Sanford, Florida.

Neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman spotted the teenager and called to report "a suspicious person" in his neighborhood. A scuffle broke out, but there were no direct witnesses. Moments later, neighbors reported hearing gunfire. Zimmerman claimed Martin hit him, knocking him to the pavement. Zimmerman contends that he took out his gun and shot Martin in self-defense. Critics said Zimmerman was unjustified in confronting the unarmed teenager, particularly since Zimmerman disregarded a police dispatcher's advice to stop following Martin.

Read More. In July , Zimmerman was acquitted of a second degree murder charge, igniting protests. The image of Martin wearing a hoodie became iconic. Professional athletes donned hoodies, and protestors repeated the mantra: "I am Trayvon Martin" to express solidarity and outrage. Martin's death inspired then-President Barack Obama to deliver a heartfelt message to Martin's parents, saying, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

Since then, the deaths of several African-Americans at the hands of police kept the " Black Lives Matter " movement in the public eye. Here are some of the cases that led to protests, and kept alive the national conversation about the deaths of black Americans, police conduct, and what critics say is inequality in the justice system.

Eric Garner, Eric Garner. Police tried to arrest Garner, a father of six, in front of a store for allegedly selling cigarettes. Garner raised both hands in the air and asked officers not to shoot him. Seconds later, Officer Daniel Pantaleo grabbed the pound Garner in a chokehold, pulling him to the sidewalk and rolling him onto his stomach. The New York Police Department prohibits the use of chokeholds.

Garner, who had asthma, repeatedly said, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe! Police said he suffered a heart attack and died en route to a hospital. The death was ruled a homicide.

It also highlighted a new way of organizing protest activities. The social media platform enabled contact with a wide network of people to voice their unhappiness with the Martin case and other incidents of violence directed toward African Americans.

These are rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution which many believed the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Martin violated and the courts ignored. We need to love ourselves and fight for a world where Black lives matter. While visiting his relatives in Mississippi, year-old Chicago native, Emmett Till, was accused of insulting a local white female storeowner. Yet, in beleaguered communities of color across the country, the young black men who face police violence at levels many times more than their white counterparts, do indeed face a greater risk of being shot by someone in their neighborhood.

They face a sort of double victimization between an at-times brutal law enforcement apparatus and a relentless spray of neighborhood gun violence. But there was hope and belief that his death would somehow matter. He was eventually acquitted.

Many of the young people who took to the streets in those early days, in some cases by the thousands, had never participated in any form of protest before. But in Martin, who turned 17 not long before his death, they saw themselves.

He was fresh-faced and lanky with narrow shoulders that gave away his youthfulness despite his height. In photos blasted across front pages and webpages, he was shown as an innocent pre-teen and later, as supporters of Zimmerman and others such as white supremacists groups attempted to paint Martin as a thug, photos of a mean-mugging teenager with middle fingers thrust into the air. It took the national news media weeks to cover the case in earnest, as in the beginning it was a small cadre of African-American journalists mostly who first pushed the case into the mainstream.

For black people in America, regardless of their lot or profession, it was difficult not see a bit of themselves in Trayvon Martin. He was followed, confronted and shot by Zimmerman after a struggle in a courtyard of an apartment complex where Martin's father's girlfriend lived. With Fulton and Martin taking consecutive chapters to tell the story, it unfolds like a true-crime serial: labyrinthine, episodic and appallingly real. They never intended to take five years to write it, but their anguish made it impossible until now.

Six days after the trial verdict, President Barack Obama delivered what many consider to be his most eloquent address about race. Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. The American Dialect Society declared blacklivesmatter its word of the year in Racism, racial profiling and gun control were critical issues during the presidential campaign.

Yet since Fulton and Martin wrote the book, the US has changed again. How do they feel under the current administration? Is she more scared for black people now?