Thousands of people are wearing hoodies today. And still more hooded protestors will be gathering at Union Square at 6pm to protest the shooting of Trayvon Martin last month. This morning the Martin family also confirmed on NBC that they will be attending the march.
Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a George Zimmerman after Zimmerman though Martin looked suspicious as he walked to a family members home on February 26. Zimmerman, who was carrying a gun, disobeyed police orders not to follow Martin and ended up getting in a scuffle with Martin before shooting him. Zimmerman, who can be heard calling Martin a coon and an asshole on his 911 call, described Martin as wearing a hoodie and carrying something in his hands. That something turned out to be a bag of candy.
While the white house announced on Tuesday that the United States The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, and the FBI opened an investigation into the facts and circumstances of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman has still not been arrested. So a group of people in New York decided to show that a person wearing a hoodie, or carrying candy, should not be considered a threat and started the Facebook event “Million Hoddie march for Trayvon Martin” which has now become a viral, national event scheduled for tonight.
More than three thousand people have rsvp’d on facebook and in the past 24 hours more than 30 thousand have been invited to the march.
During a national planning conference call, held by inter-occupy and scheduled at the last minute yesterday, people from around the country talked about marches in Washington and Florida in solidarity with New York’s million hoodies march.
Much of the call focused on the messaging behind the event. While some wanted the event to have a more international tone most on the call emphasized that this march was very specifically about racism and a war that police have waged on black and brown people in America, and about the fear that young black men specifically have to face when simply leaving the house.
“Every black mother I know has said these words ” I spank my child so the police wont in the street” we are literally training our children to avoid the overseer (modern day plantation),” reads a statement released by occupy the hood about the Trayvon Martin case.
With this in mind one mother said, during the conference call, that she would be sending her children to school wearing hoodies and with skittles and messages about what happened to Martin for their classmates.
For those who cant make the march the website and flyers ask everyone to “WEAR YOUR HOODIE ON WEDNESDAY 3/21 and upload a pic to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #millionhoodies”
The march organizers and the Martin family are also encouraging people to sign an online petition that is “calling on Norman Wolfinger, Florida’s 18th District State’s Attorney, to investigate my son’s murder and prosecute George Zimmerman for the shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin”