Justice
In Florida: A Throughline from Trayvon Martin to Andrew Gillum
Andrew Gillum, the first African-American candidate to win the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida, helped inspire the movement against the ”Stand Your Ground” law, launched after the murder of Trayvon Martin.
Last night Andrew Gillum became the first African-American candidate to win the Democratic Party nomination for Florida governor and it’s not out of the question to say that he can thank Trayvon Martin for that.
When Martin, an unarmed black teenager, was killed in 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, thousands of people were mobilized and marched throughout the state after police refused to arrest Zimmerman. Among those activists was a group called the Dream Defenders, made up of mostly college students, who trekked from Daytona Beach to Sanford that year, in protest of the fact that Sanford police had gone weeks without arresting Zimmerman.