Why I Participated in the Respect Black Life: I am Trayvon Martin March

I participated in The Respect Black Life: I am Trayvon Marton March in Atlanta, GA and it was truly a fantastic example of brotherhood and peaceful protest. It was great to see the leaders of the local chapters of the Shrine of the Black Madonna, National Action Network, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, NAACP, Let Us Make Man, Nation of Islam and the FTP Movement combine with students from the AUC center (Clark, Morris Brown, Spelman, Morehouse) and other citizens who want justice for Trayvon to make a statement to the city, the county, the state and hopefully the world. It was a great jumpstart to a movement that I hope will accomplish three goals:

1. Bring attention to what I feel was an incorrect and unjust verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.

2. Put pressure on the Federal Government to try George Zimmerman for civil rights offenses.

3. Repeal a “Stand Your Ground Law” that seems to end up in a disproportionate amount of minorities being murdered unjustly.

In addition, I hope that anyone who feels as if this verdict was unjust would boycott Florida economically and not spend any money or do any travel in the state until they make amends for the injustice done to Trayvon Martin and the Martin family.

For those that live in the Metropolitan Atlanta area, there will be another protest that will be held on July 20, 2013 at the Richard Russell Federal Building at 12:00pm with a goal of putting some pressure on the federal government to try George Zimmerman for federal civil rights violations. Anyone interested in participating in this non-violent protest should contact Rev. Derrick Rice at Revdr2004@aol.com or email some of the other organizers at: respectblacklife@gmail.com