Trayvon Martin and racial profiling as an undercurrent in Republican rhetoric

The second-degree murder charge against George Zimmerman undoubtedly signals a victory for the movement initiated by Trayvon Martin’s parents. Trayvon’s killing and the lack of an arrest captured the public imaginary throughout America and created a demand for justice to be seen to be done. While a charge is not a conviction, the trial will be played out in the public eye, so attention will be drawn to laws that have been promoted by the rightwing organizations ALEC and the National Rifle Association – concealed carry of weapons, easy access to guns, and “Stand Your Ground” – which will likely form Zimmerman’s defense.

The special prosecutor, Angela Corey, a Republican reputed to be tough on crime, denied that Zimmerman’s arrest was a response to pressure and maintained the state was following its due process. Corey’s statement announcing the charge attempted to overcome the perception of a conflict between her investigation and the Sanford authorities by linking the decision to prosecute to the constitutional rights of citizens: “Let me emphasize that we do not prosecute by pressure or petition,” she said. “We prosecute cases based on the relevant facts of each case and on the laws of the state of Florida. … By strictly adhering to this standard we vigorously pursue justice for all victims of crimes while maintaining the rights of every defendant. … Every single day, prosecutors throughout this country handle difficult cases, always keeping at the forefront their mandate to seek justice.”

However, the probable cause affidavit released by her office on Thursday made clear that Corey rejects Zimmerman’s claim – accepted at face value by police at the time – that Martin attacked him. Her investigators determined that Zimmerman “profiled” Martin and then pursued and confronted him.

The state had to respond to the demands for justice, to have a trial at least, to maintain its legitimacy. The ideal of equality under the law is important to the ideological justification of state rule. But this also intersects with other social currents in America. The NRA, which advocated and wrote the Stand Your Ground law, is an important conservative constituency for Republicans: Mitt Romney went out of his way to cultivate ties with the group and adopt their inflammatory anti-Obama rhetoric at their annual convention in St. Louis, Missouri, last week.

Speaking at the same convention, the NRA’s vice-president Wayne LaPierre tried to deflect criticism of Stand Your Ground by attacking the media for publicizing Martin’s killing and ignoring other violent crime. “By the time I finish this speech, two Americans will be slain, six women will be raped, 27 of us will be robbed, and 50 more will be beaten. That’s the harsh reality we face, all of us, every single day,” he said. What the NRA wants is to use the fear of crime to enable armed white citizens to enforce vigilante justice against a perceived criminal threat – exactly what Zimmerman did – without fear of legal consequences.

Supporter of right-wing causes and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz chimed in to pillory Angela Corey, saying he thinks she doesn’t have a case for second-degree murder. “What you have here is an elected public official who made a campaign speech last night for reelection when she gave her presentation and over-charged.”  He described the affidavit of probable cause as “thin,” “irresponsible,” and “unethical.”

While there is a clear division in public opinion over the case, it is not purely on race lines. Gary Younge overstates his argument in the Guardian when he says: “What follows from here has the potential to be every bit as divisive as the OJ Simpson trial and every bit as inflammatory as the Rodney King case – only this time there’s a black president in an election year.” According to the Washington Post: “Eight in 10 blacks say they think Martin’s killing was not justified, compared with 38 percent of whites. Most whites say they do not know enough about the shooting to say whether it was justified.” Almost 40% of whites agree with the overwhelming majority of African-Americans, and the rest are uncertain: that’s more nuanced than opinion was on OJ Simpson’s guilt. The divisions in the country over this case are more ideological than racial – racism is expressed through attitudes on gun control and stoking fears of criminality.

A Washington Post writer, Colbert King, points out: “The murder charge doesn’t settle the question raised by Martin’s shooting. As Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander, the author of ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,’ told the Christian Science Monitor, Martin’s killing is ‘not an exceptional case except for the fact that the one who did the accosting while armed was a private citizen’ rather than a police officer. … High rates of arrest, incarceration and unexplained stops by police, Alexander said, send ‘the message to young black men that no matter who you are, what you do, whether you play by the rules or not, you’re going to be viewed and treated like a criminal and you’re likely to wind up in jail one way or another’.”

Interviewed on DemocracyNow, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous raised the same issue: “We have not had an honest conversation about racial profiling in this country in a decade. And the reality is that [the Trayvon Martin] case, for a whole generation of young people, is the first time they’re seeing their country really talk about this problem. … You know, in 2003, what, there were about 160,000-170,000 stop-and-frisks in New York; 87 percent of those resulted in no summons, no one being locked up or taken to the station. Last year, 285—excuse me, 685,000 stop-and-frisks, 685, and 88 percent of them found nothing. You know, less than 10 percent of those were of white people; you know, more than 90 percent were black and Latino people. And the reality is that we’ve seen a massive upsurge in racial profiling over the last decade …”

Nobel prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison told the Guardian: “They keep saying, we have to have a conversation about race in this country. Well, this is the conversation. We’ll see if it plays out, if it makes a difference in terms of not just the hate crime thing, but the law.” She drew attention to the coded racial language of the conservative right, and how Santorum described Obama as a “government nig – uh.” “He said he didn’t say that! They used to say ‘government nigger’ when black people got jobs in the post office, stuff like that. And that’s what he was saying.”

The national discussion of race coincides with an election campaign in which the subverting of state law by the Republican right is being pulled into the public eye. Zimmerman’s trial will highlight racial profiling as an undercurrent in American political rhetoric – and will build opposition to it.

Challenging Racial Profiling: Trayvon Martin, Occupy Wall Street, and Social Justice

The Trayvon Martin case is currently being tried in the media, with op-eds galore which begin by decrying a rush to judgment, then express their own judgment through their presentation of the facts. The police department is trying to justify its failure to charge George Zimmerman with any crime by releasing selective information about the killer and his victim, while Zimmerman’s family and attorney are alleging that Martin attacked the shooter – a story that is not borne out by witness and video evidence which show Zimmerman unharmed.

The polarization of public opinion and the family’s demands for justice has laid bare the role of endemic racial profiling in the case. Zimmerman had channeled the gated-community imaginary connecting neighborhood burglaries with groups of youth in hoodies and so automatically found Martin suspicious. After the shooting, narcotics and not homicide officers were sent to the scene; the officers initially accepted Zimmerman’s story at face value since the victim was a black youth in a hoodie, and routine homicide evidence was not collected.

The lead detective on the case, Chris Serino, did not believe Zimmerman’s story, but was overruled by the police chief and state district attorney because of their interpretation of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Jonathan Capehart pointed out in the Washington Post that: “Serino didn’t believe Zimmerman’s version of events and recommended a manslaughter charge. But he was overruled. And according to a report from Joy-Ann Reid of the Grio yesterday, the decision came from atop the law enforcement food chain: the state attorney. A source with knowledge of the investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin tells the Grio that it was then Sanford police chief Bill Lee, along with Capt. Robert O’Connor, the investigations supervisor, who made the decision to release George Zimmerman on the night of February 26th, after consulting with State Attorney Norman Wolfinger – in person.”

The Sanford police have a history of systemic racial discrimination, which led to Lee’s appointment six months ago to clean up the force. Lee himself was forced to step down in the aftermath of public reaction to his refusal to charge Zimmerman. Interviewing NAACP president Ben Jealous about Lee’s ouster, Amy Goodwin of “Democracy Now” asked: “what happened after Trayvon was killed, when he’s laying on the ground, and the police come, and George Zimmerman is standing over him, as witnesses describe, the police didn’t drug or alcohol test George Zimmerman. They drug and alcohol tested the corpse of Trayvon. … Then his body was taken to the morgue, where it sat unidentified for—it laid unidentified for two days, when the police had his cell phone, could easily have identified who he was. He was talking to his girlfriend as this was all taking place.”

Jealous replied: “This is why this chief has to go, because the reality is that if you’re a chief, and your officers come – are called to a scene where a man has killed a boy, and no arrest is made, no evidence is gathered – no attempt to, you know, check the hands of the shooter for powder burns or anything else, powder residue, to gather the clothing of the killer for DNA evidence or anything else, or to otherwise gather evidence from that scene – and then no one attempts to contact this boy’s parents, to track them down, to pick up the cell phone and call the last number and say, ‘Who does this belong to?’ and then no one arrests the shooter and begins an investigation, and weeks go by, and a sense of safety that was already tenuous in this community – you were called here to rebuild – erodes more and more and more, there’s a certain point when there’s nothing that you as that chief can do to fix it, and you’ve just got to go.”

The rapid spread of protests in support of Martin’s family throughout the U.S. highlights the widespread use of racial profiling in major cities. “Stop and frisk” tactics have led to stepped-up police harassment and criminalization of black and Latino youth in New York, in particular. In an echo of the protests around Trayvon Martin’s killing, The LA Times reports, “marchers in New York City held a demonstration to demand the arrest of a New York police officer for fatally shooting an unarmed teenager after chasing him into his family’s apartment. The march Thursday night in the Bronx, where 18-year-old Ramarley Graham lived, was the latest rally in what protesters say will be a relentless campaign on behalf of the teenager. ‘We will get justice, because I’m not going to stop. A mother never lays down,’ Graham’s mother, Constance Malcolm, told the crowd.”

Ryan Devereaux in The Guardian notes that the NYPD is now facing a federal class action over the expansion of its stop-and-frisk program into public housing. “The plaintiffs include several mothers and their teenage children. They claim the program regularly leads to unwarranted stops, harassment and trespassing arrests in their own buildings and the buildings of their friends and family. … NYPD data indicates that between 2006 and 2010, the department made 329,446 stops based on suspicion of trespassing, representing 12% of all stops. Out the total number of stops 7.5% have led to arrests. In 2010 the 10 precincts with the most arrests [predominantly African American and Latino communities] accounted for nearly as many stops as the remaining 66 precincts combined.”

The Guardian was the only major newspaper to report Wednesday’s successful Occupy protest against fare increases on the New York Metro, which the movement has connected with police criminalization of youth. “An Occupy Wall Street-affiliated group has claimed responsibility for chaining open more than 20 subway gates in New York City, in an action intended to highlight issues surrounding the public transit system. … Chains and padlocks were used to hold emergency gates open on the F, L, R, Q, 3, and 6 lines. Signs resembling Metro Transit Authority notices were posted on the subway walls that read ‘Free Entry, No Fare. Please Enter Through The Service Gate’, while activists above ground urged passengers to ride for free. … [Occupy supporter José] Martín said one of the motivations for Wednesday’s action was to highlight the number of minorities arrested for fare evasion. ‘One of the driving motivations was the criminalization of black and brown youth through the NYPD quota system,’ he explained. ‘A lot of Occupiers have been going to jail for the last six months and finding themselves in jail cells with black and Latino youth who are often there for nothing more than fare evasion, thrown in cages for such a tiny violation and then often forced to lose their job or get in trouble in school’.”

Police racial profiling of black and Latino citizens is a political strategy aimed at containing the consequences of increasing social polarization, but an accumulation of abuses has eroded the ties between police and communities. It’s what underlies many unlawful police killings of individuals, young and old. Another aspect of this strategy is to suppress expressions of political protest outside the official two-party system, such as the Occupy movement. The growing public anger at the police in the Trayvon Martin case signifies that communities across the nation no longer accept them as protectors of public safety and are demanding justice.

OWS and Trayvon Martin: America Will Not Be Satisfied Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters

The coincidence of the Occupy protests with the growing national movement of outrage against the failure of Sanford, Florida police to arrest the killer of Trayvon Martin has called into question police authority and undermined the NYPD push to criminalize dissent. Despite violent nightly skirmishes from Monday onwards, the NYPD was not able to oust the occupiers from Union Square, and on Wednesday evening “hundreds poured into the square at 6 p.m. for a rally for Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager hunted down and killed for being black. Trayvon’s aggrieved parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, spoke at the rally, dubbed The Million Hoodie March, which drew 1,000 hoodie-wearing supporters who sported the same apparel that Trayvon’s killer, George Zimmerman, found ‘suspicious’ as he stalked the 17-year-old through a gated Sanford, Florida, community. … Around 7:30 p.m., the rally became a march, commanding 6th Avenue and easily overwhelming the considerable police presence.”

While police massed at the square in the aftermath of the demonstration, they remained on the defensive: “500 cops, accompanied by dozens of paddy wagons and arrest vehicles, surrounded the park – there was so much manpower that they stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they ringed the square – and pushed the protesters back onto the public sidewalk area in what was the largest show of police force since the November 15 raid on Liberty Square. But the show of force was thankfully just that, and though white shirts patrolled the crowd and provoked the occupiers, the paddy wagons and NYPD arrest bus remained empty. “

Last Saturday, March 25, hundreds more occupiers marched to protest the violent arrests the previous week and to demand the resignation of the NYC police commissioner, Ray Kelly. According to the Guardian: “Organisers framed Saturday’s action as a critique of an array of NYPD tactics that tend to disproportionately target low-income communities and people of colour. Protesters repeatedly pointed to the department’s widespread use of street-level stop and frisks and the surveillance of Muslim communities as examples of failed NYPD policy.” An example of this practice was the violent arrest of Mesiah Burciaga-Hameed, a 16-year-old activist from Oakland, who briefly blocked the path of a police scooter. According to The Occupied Wall Street Journal: “Despite her change of heart, she was quickly snatched from the sidewalk by officers who dragged her, hysterically crying, from her friends. … Burciaga-Hameed’s arrest was consistent with the random yet systematic targeting of women, teenagers and men of color for arrest, a pattern noted by many who were following the four-hour march on Twitter.”

The continued assertions of popular sovereignty in Occupy’s rhetoric and direct actions have been revitalized by the demands for justice in the Trayvon Martin case. The ouster of the Sanford police chief, following a motion of no confidence by the city council, showed a potent demonstration of the public’s power to push back for accountability from law enforcement, a movement that continues unabated.  The protests against arbitrary police actions have spread through the country like the Occupy movement in its initial days. In Chicago, hundreds of people rallied in the Loop and Daley Plaza to show support for Trayvon Martin’s family. “It’s not just about this protest,” Jazmin Barnett-Birdsong told the Morris Daily Herald. “It’s about all the protests nationwide. It’s about unity and solidarity. We as a country, we think justice should prevail.”

The mass nature of the movement means that hundreds of incidents where police have racially profiled African-Americans and Latinos have accumulated to the point where communities no longer believe the police are serving justice. Rallies were planned for Pittsburgh; San Francisco; Houston; Atlanta; Indianapolis; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Detroit; Memphis, Tennessee; Iowa City, Denver, and Sanford itself on Monday where 500 people crowded into the Sanford City Commission. Outside the meeting, several thousand people carried signs, rallied and marched in Martin’s support. “We’re not asking for an eye for an eye, we’re asking for justice, justice, justice,” said Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father. More than 2.2 million people have added their signatures to an online petition demanding an arrest in the case. Several Miami Heat players took the basketball floor on Saturday with messages such as “RIP Trayvon Martin” and “We want justice” scrawled on their sneakers, after posting photos of themselves wearing black hoodies on Twitter.

When Martin Luther King famously said, “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” he was speaking about civil rights in the 60s. But the words encompass our 2012 reality.