A Million Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Mar 21 2012

Location: 

Union Square, NYC

A march took place Wednesday evening in Manhattan calling for justice in the case of Trayvon Martin. He was an unarmed black teenager who was shot to death by a neighborhood watch captain in Florida last month.

In New York, Martin's parents told demonstrators chanting "we want arrests" that they will keep fighting to get justice for their son. "My son did not deserve to die," Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin's father, said on Wednesday. He immediately thanked the hundreds of people who participated in a march in her son's memory.

My son did not deserve to die," the teenager's father, Tracy Martin, said after thanking the crowd.

Martin's son, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was killed Feb. 26, in Sanford, Fla. He was returning to a gated community in the city after buying candy at a convenience store. He was unarmed and was wearing a hooded sweat shirt, called a hoodie.

The neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, has not been charged in the shooting. Zimmerman has said the teen attacked him and he shot him in self-defense.

"The hoodie is this ubiquitous piece of clothing that everyone wears but when black people wear it, it's interpreted as a symbol of criminal activity," Benbow said, a 30-year-old Miami-based graphic artist. "There are a lot of stereotypes that get thrown around and we need to be aware of them to deconstruct them." "This isn't about being pro-Trayvon. It's about being anti-stereotyping," Oliver said "Seeing someone wearing a hoodie on Halloween will hopefully allow people to examine what they are feeling if they are scared or why they may be judging the person as a threat."

Oliver posted a short film on YouTube and created a Facebook page hoping to attract attention like the thousands of pictures posted by celebrities and athletes mimicking Trayvon's iconic hoodie image in the wake of his shooting death. That, she said, was about solidarity. This is about discourse.

External sources: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/347784265268106/
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-10-12/news/os-trayvon-martin-hoodie-hal…
Posted by norrisp on Dec 17 2012

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
Does nothing (at all)Doesn't really have an impact, beyond possibly expressing the artist-activist's dissatisfaction with the world.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear short-term goal. Short-term goals tend to be things like: create or repeal a law; get a President impeached; make the city administration repair a sidewalk. A campaign with a short-term goal needs a clear theory of change, complete with targets that can be cajoled or pressured into effecting the goal.