“Movement for Black Lives”: Vision for Black Lives Preamble

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“Movement for Black Lives”:Vision for Black Lives Preamble
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Abstract

In February 2012, a seventeen-year-old African American boy named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed while walking through a Sanford, Florida, neighborhood by a neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman. In the subsequent trial, Zimmerman was acquitted of murder and manslaughter, even though the only thing that aroused his suspicions on Trayvon was the fact that Trayvon was Black and wearing a sweatshirt with the hood on his head. The verdict outraged many Americans, particularly African Americans, and focused attention on encounters around the United States between Black people and the police. Sadly, a substantial series of similar killings was exposed to public scrutiny in the next few years as a result: Eric Garner in Staten Island in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, Tamir Rice in Cleveland in November 2014, Sandra Bland in Hempstead, Texas, in July 2015, Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota, in July 2016, and many more. Worse, in most of these incidents, the police officers involved received no serious punishment, if any. Some were not even indicted.

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