Martin protestors challenge corporate domination of politics

By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about it: on Feb. 26, George Zimmerman fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin just 70 feet from the boy’s home.

In response, President Obama promised an investigation and remarked that if he “had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” At the same time, Republicans have accused Obama of “race-baiting,” as they either dismiss the plausibility of prejudice or avoid the subject entirely. During a radio interview, Newt Gingrich claimed that “it’s not a question of who that young man looked like.” Mitt Romney, on not quite the other hand, dodged journalists’ questions about the incident in a manner that reinforces Dr. King’s timeless adage, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” Yet in vitriol or reticence, the G.O.P. has not dealt a betrayal as much as a perpetuation of grand ole American racism.

A cursory examination of Zimmerman’s 911 call reveals an antiquated racist fury. As Trayvon walked to 7-Eleven moments before his death, Zimmerman allegedly told the dispatcher, “These assholes … always get away … fucking coons.”

So let us call Trayvon’s murder what it is—a lynching. A lynching in defense of imagined private property. Worse, the state evidently condones his killer’s actions. Not only does a murderer remain free, but Trayvon’s parents went three days without being notified of their son’s death. As they filed missing person’s reports, the Sanford Police Department tested Trayvon’s body for drugs and searched for a non-existent criminal record. This leads the American people to wonder what protocol would have been followed if the complexions of victim and perpetrator were reversed. If a black man shot an alleged trespasser like Trayvon with white skin, would he have been released? Would they have returned his gun?

Above all, George Zimmerman’s defense is Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which states, “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked … has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly.” Zimmerman, however, was in no way targeted by Trayvon Martin.

According to Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement, justifiable homicides have tripled since Governor Jeb Bush enacted the law in 2005. Written by the Koch Brothers’ American Legislative Exchange Council, the law has spread to 20 other states through lobbying by the National Rifle Association and activism by the Tea Party, which is 77 percent non-Hispanic white. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in the New York Times, “What do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president? A surge of white racial resentment, loosely disguised as a populist revolt.”

Although he dreamed of a career in aviation, Trayvon Martin now shares the same historical station as Troy Davis, Sean Bell, Danny Chen, Emmett Till, and countless others. Simultaneously, the Kochs and their allies enjoy their place among history’s plutocrats, which begs the question—how far have we come in terms of fair representation?

In 1914, during a similar period of income inequality, 1,200 coal miners went on strike against John Rockefeller. Erecting a tent colony (sound familiar?) in Ludlow, Colo., the strikers sought collective bargaining rights and a 10 percent wage increase. The National Guard, hired by Rockefeller, gunned down the strikers and set the colony ablaze.

Today, there is evidence of historical rhyming, if not repetition. Rockefeller conquered the energy industry through ostensible philanthropy. “We will unite together…on the basis of cooperation,” he said. As Barry Lynn reminds us, “All understood perfectly the ultimatum hidden in the honeyed words: Join or be crushed.” Today, this mentality is the norm in corporate America. Koch Industries expanded 2,500-fold since 1961 by exerting similar tactics and public influence behind a facade of entrepreneurship. Just as Rockefeller beckoned the National Guard, so too have today’s monopolies encouraged excessive force against poor people’s communities and movements.

The undue influence of money in today’s political system is proving correct the observation made by Malcom X nearly half a century ago, when he said that “you cannot have capitalism without racism.” So far this election season, the top 100 individual Super PACs constitute 3.7 percent of contributors, but over 80 percent of contributions. As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, there will be more Trayvon Martins for one simple reason—historically marginalized communities cannot financially compete for adequate representation against the legacy of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy and conservative talk radio’s call for the privatization of public services, for example, via neighborhood watch volunteers like George Zimmerman.

Yet, through bottom-up organizing, there is cause for optimism. Tens of thousands of Floridians rallied for Trayvon in the weeks following his death, with ripple effects swelling across the country that even incited protests at Georgetown. So while Time may have deemed 2011 the “Year of the Protester,” dissent is alive and well in 2012, and it is through this dissent that Trayvon’s murder will be vindicated.