Friend --

Yesterday, he would have turned 27 years old.

Instead, Trayvon Martin died at the age of 17 after being shot by George Zimmerman.

(February 5, 1995 – February 26, 2012)

We'd like to remember Trayvon with an excerpt from “The Climate of Fear,” which appeared in a 2012 edition of Green Pages: 

The story isn’t new. It goes back to when people were purchased, transported & sold out of Africa. It’s the Freedom Rid­ers and Emmett Till (brutally slaughtered for— gasp—maybe whistling at a white woman). It’s when neighborhood organizers were portrayed as ‘hoods’ by unethical cops & then hunted & killed. Such was the case of Fred Hampton, in Chicago, taken out by the FBI. Being any sort of excellent black leader could fare no better, as we all know. Martin Luther King Jr. & Malcolm X were both shot, surprisingly, after they each realized that peace was the answer to violence.

The riots of the ’60s in Watts, Oakland, Detroit & elsewhere had a reason. The evidence often can be hidden or destroyed, but when it emerges there is no hiding for the perpetrators, other than the clannism of certain white males who feel that they are never to be challenged & that they are never the wrongdoers. It’s more expected in the deep south, but it’s been all over. Found in our 3 premiere cities from coast to coast: New York, Chicago & LA just as now found in a small town like Sanford, Florida.

When the Rodney King beating is captured on film. It’s ‘justified’ in that he may have had a record & ‘deserved’ it. The shooting of Oscar Grant at the Oakland BART station? He seemed ‘suspicious.’ Amadou Diallo in NYC shot 41 times by several officers? They did it in ‘self-defense’ since they “thought he had a weapon” when he got out his wallet to show them his ID. It’s again, in NYC with 18 year old RaMarley Graham shot by police. All were ‘guilty’ of being black men.

The Green Party exists because we reject discrimination & the violent fearmongering that works to divide us, so that we can be conquered by those who are thriving in the existing power structure. We reject the agenda of those who embrace their greed as good, be it hoarded power or hoarded wealth. We stand, not as a dis­appointing political party that play-acts as the one that those who are dis-empowered can cling to. We stand, not as the party that hates to share, says that whatever they speak is ‘right’ & flaunts hierarchy as somehow ‘earned’ even though it’s really just born into.

The Green Party stands as the alternative and in unity with all of the 99% of us who could get along better if the indoctrination from the power structure would let us.

Support from people like you makes the Green Party’s continued fight against systemic racism and violence possible. With your help our candidates take this fight to every level of our government.

To read the rest of “The Climate of Fear,” visit GreenPagesNews.org

In solidarity,
Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org/