“Open season […] after a verdict like this”: that’s how Gary Younge describes the situation. “Let it be noted that on this day, Saturday 13 July 2013, it was still deemed legal in the US to chase and then shoot dead an unarmed young black man on his way home from the store because you didn’t like the look of him.”
Protests drawing in tens of thousands are taking place across the United States, expressing outrage at the acquittal of a racist killer. The verdict has been passed on American racism.
Mana on campus called a snap action outside the US High Commission in Auckland this evening, and we were proud to stand in solidarity with all those protesting this criminal injustice in the United States and abroad.
US socialist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor ends her response to the acquittal with these powerful words from Martin Luther King:
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
