On Monday, June 24, 2013 the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin began in Sanford, Florida. The second degree murder charge will be decided by a six-person all-female jury without the participation of a single African person.
While mainstream media will provide an endless cycle of legal analysis and political pundits, none will identify the root cause of the murder of Trayvon Martin or countless other Africans as colonial violence.
We cannot rely on the system to deliver justice for African people. We must build our own power through our own movement.
The following is excerpted from an article published on Uhuru News immediately following the murder of Trayvon Martin.
SANFORD, FL — On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was chased down and murdered by a white nationalist Crime Watch vigilante thug named George Zimmerman. Zimmerman, who stalked Trayvon as he walked home, was on the phone with 911 as he chased and shot the teenager down.
In the audio from a witness' 911 call, Trayvon can be heard screaming for help right before Zimmerman shot him to death.
Then, after Zimmerman murdered young Trayvon Martin, police refused to arrest him, despite witness statements that made it clear that it was a cold-blooded murder.
Instead, police allowed Zimmerman to continue to roam free to kill another African child under the pretense of self-defense.
Trayvon's murder part of long history of colonial violence
Trayvon's murder is part of a long history of colonial violence committed inside the U.S. against African people. This violence against African people has spanned from the time we were kidnapped from our Africa and brought against our will to the U.S.
The list of victims is innumerable spanning centuries and including names like Emmett Till, whose lynched and mutilated 14-year-old body was found in a river in Mississippi in 1955. It includes names like James Byrd who was tied to the back of a truck in Texas and dragged until his head was torn off in 1998 and Shareef Jones who was shot in 2008 by a pizza-delivering, former cop in Philadelphia and driven around in a police squad car until he bled to death.
It includes the Africans regularly murdered by police like Sean Bell, Marquell McCullough, Oscar Grant, Kathryn Johnson, and many more.
This violence against African people is colonial violence, a violence used to enslave or keep people enslaved. It has always been a part of U.S. society that was built off of and continues to require the stolen labor and wealth of African people.
Sometimes it is done by the State in the form of the police and other times it is done by regular white people, but its purpose is the same — to keep Africans in "our place." A place of subjugation and exploitation.
These kinds of attacks, both by the State and by regular white people, are growing more today as people around the world who look like Trayvon Martin and his people are struggling to take control over our own lives, creating crisis for the white empire that has lived off of our stolen labor and resources for so long.
Revolutionary organization
The only reason this type of violence can continue to happen to our children and people is because we don't have power. Because someone else has power over our lives, we are subject to whatever they want to do to us.
We can't depend on a system that has historically imposed violence, ignorance and misery on our people to punish individuals who join in in committing violence against us.
We also can't just respond every time an incident like the murder of Trayvon happens as if they are isolated incidents.
African people, we've got to get organized! We've got to get organized, not just to respond to individual instances of colonial violence, but to the primary problem. We have to get power over our own lives and our own communities.
We have to have the power to control what happens in our community, economically and politically. That's self-determination, and to get self-determination, we have to build revolutionary organization to fight for it! No one should be able to attack our children or our people with impunity.
Justice for Trayvon Martin!
Reparations for the family of Trayvon Martin!
Not another black life!
Build revolutionary organization to defend our own people!
