It’s been over a week since, on the way back to the Bay area from the Corcoran mobilization in support of the hunger strikers, a table of friends told myself and the people I’d driven up with that Zimmerman had been found not guilty, in the trial about his murder of Black teenager Trayvon Martin. That night people began gathering and continued throughout the week, to protest this deeply racist verdict, that essentially sends the message that racist murders like this will go unpunished and will actually be defended and protected by many. On the Sunday following the verdict, I marched with 1,000 people in the street and felt the collective power of people saying no, this is injustice, and this kind of message is wrong. With this print, I wanted to draw out the ways in which white supremacy kills specific to this case and others like it, where racial profiling turned a teenager walking with candy into a “suspicious” or dangerous threat, an idea that was replicated in the courtroom, a place clearly already rigged, being a part of the “Just-us” system that immensely and disproportionately targets, arrests, incarcerates and kills people of color and Indigenous people. As Aura Bogado writes in “White Supremacy Acquits George Zimmerman”, “It’s because he abides by the logic of white supremacy, and was supported by a defense team—and a swath of society—that supports the lingering idea that some black men must occasionally be killed with impunity in order to keep society-at-large safe.” So, the question I ask myself is, in light of the ongoing violence and death caused by white supremacy, what can myself and other white people do, in response and in multiracial coalition with the people and communities who have been resisting this violence all along? One place to find some ideas is at the Catalyst Project’s website, where they have posted a list of suggestions here.
Noisy and Quiet 