NYRican in LA : Crying in Public for Trayvon and Parents of Color Everywhere

July 25, 2013— -- The night a group of jurors decided to collude with institutional racism and declare George Zimmerman not guilty for taking Trayvon Martin away from his family and community, I was working retail. It felt like a particularly hard shift with my manager down my throat to make my sales goal. When I got out at 10:30 pm PST, I casually scanned Twitter, waiting for my pareja to pick me up. The anger and sadness I saw in my timeline told me what the verdict was. I felt my body get hot and tears welled up in my eyes.

I didn't cry immediately though. Instead I walked out onto the streets of Downtown Los Angeles to see if anything looked or at the very least felt different. Homeless men and women walked past me with all of their belongings. Across the street hipsters waited on line to get into a bar that was pumping loud music. It was business as usual.

Once in bed that night, I did cry quietly to myself. I was crying not just for Trayvon and the state of the criminal legal system but my heart went to Trayvon's parents. Having worked with families who had lost their children to police brutality and racists, I have witnessed first hand the devastation caused not just by losing a child but by false hope parents of color are forced into when depending on the state to show them some sign that the lives of their babies meant something and being shown that the rule of law is not something that applies to them.

I wasn't surprised by the verdict. That was one feeling I didn't have. I had witnessed this sort of thing too many times before. Felt this way too many times before. I hate it.

I thought of Altagracia Mayi, who in 1991 lost her son Manny to a racist gang that chased and beat him down 14 blocks in Corona, Queens and has had to watch year after year, the police, the courts, the local and federal government collude to devalue the life of her child. Every time a young man of color is killed and the murderer gets away with it, the wound is reopened, pushing her and so many other mothers back into despair and anger. I needed an outlet for my frustration, my feelings and I hoped the city I called home would give that space, but the day after the verdict I had to work.

Having not really slept and agitated, the last thing I wanted to do was sell clothes. I wanted to be in the streets, publicly mourning and expressing my outrage. Plus I was sure someone at work would say some BS that would make me go off at them. But at work no one said anything. It was like the verdict never went down. As soon as I finished my shift I headed to Mariachi Plaza in my neighborhood of Boyle Heights where there was to be a rally. I hoped there I could scream or at least cry publicly.

Friends of mine had spent the day in Leimert Park and on the 10 Freeway surrounded by police. Perhaps the comparison is unfair, but I had hoped for something like the response I helped organize in New York City, when the police officers that killed Amadou Diallo were let off in February of 2000. Thousands of people took over Fifth Avenue, marching, yelling, making sure the city knew it could not be business as usual.

But Mariachi Plaza was a far cry from that. People gathered quietly in "circles" to discuss their feelings and next steps. There was an altar set up for Trayvon. A nice gesture, but I didn't want to be nice. I felt my anger spill over when one woman suggested marching onto the freeway and the audience, of mostly local Chicanos, including "Brown Berets" in their uniforms, actually laughed at her. The police who had gathered at the corner looked bored and next to the about 100 people that had gathered, a street fair with booths of crafts and food went on to the beat of cumbia music blaring from the bandshell. I was embarrassed that this was the East Los Angeles response to another young black man getting killed. Where were the so-called "leaders"? Was it that so many of these men and women were not and could not be Trayvon Martin, that created such a tepid response?

In the days that followed I was lucky enough to be surrounded by friends and loved ones that did care. I sat in meetings listening to people, including some from Florida, express their grief and anger. I helped write statements of solidarity and action. I marched and chanted in Beverly Hills, clogging up traffic for a little bit as my pareja did legal observation. Entire black families, including babies being pushed in strollers carried signs that read "Black lives matter." I cried in public. I went to a screening of Fruitvale Station, about the state sponsored killing of Oscar Grant, hosted by the ACLU of Southern California and answered aloud a resounding "no" when panelists told the audience, many of whom I recognized from the Beverly Hills march, were told to change the system from within and to depend on a legal system that so clearly failed communities of color again.

It's been almost a year since I have been here in East Los Angeles. I have defended my neighborhood from media misrepresentation. I have become engaged with community organizations and people. There is powerful work happening in the city where I live. But I am also deeply ashamed that so-called activists in my hood determined that the response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer should be a Facebook group.

Meanwhile, in the neighborhood of Echo Park, a gang injunction is set to go live that will make it safe for gentrifiers to walk their dogs at 1 am and make it dangerous for black and brown young men and women to leave their house for school at the same time because they could be picked up by police for engaging in "gang activity." Black and brown lives do matter. I just wish self-proclaimed activists in my neighborhood acted like it.