Michelle Turner Photos
Students, grandparents, and other movers and shakers from New Haven, Waterbury and Bridgeport gathered on Dixwell Avenue in New Haven in front of the Dixwell “Q” Community House on Saturday afternoon to march in protest against racial profiling and demand the arrest and trial of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, the gunman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
T‑Shirts were sold on the sidewalk as some 1,000 protesters gathered.
Yale’s Mike Morand joined the crowd after participating in a radio talk show on racial profiling with community organizers and New Haven high school students.
New Haven NAACP’s Maurice Williams and former New Haven firefighter Lt. Greg Cross were there, too …
… along with New Haven NAACP Branch President Jim Rawlings …
… housing authority Executive Director and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority New Haven Alumnae Chapter President Karen DuBois-Walton …
… and former mayoral candidate Clifton Graves and current state Rep. Gary Holder-WInfield.
“I have been marching for social justice before most of you were born,” reflected Waterbury NAACP’s Jimmie Griffin (pictured with WYBC Operations Manager Juan Castillio). “Stop the violence,” he told the crowd. “Start the love.”
Yale sophomore Raymond Noonan called the shooting of Trayvon Martin a “travesty” and said Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law” should be looked into.
“We were having a program at the church,” said the Rev. Jerry Streets, interim pastor at Dixwell United Church of Christ, “and I just decided to come outside.”
The march also brought out Occupiers and old “revolutionaries.” Enter the former Black Panther Party leader Kathleen Cleaver, who is now a senior lecturer at the Yale Law School. She was among the speakers who addressed the crowd at the march’s end at City Hall. Donned in a blue hoodie, she said she’s been walking across “that New Haven Green over 30 years.” She said she was pleased to see that young people were standing up again because “this has happened over and over and over and over again … and it should not happen now and it should not happen again.” She said most of the activists of the ‘60s became involved because they were affected by the Emmett Till case. “You will remember who you were with this day [because] ‘The Trayvon Martin case changed my life,’” she predicted.
Occupy New Haven attorney Norm Pattis said he walked up to a group of young black men at the march and asked them what the word meant on their signs. According to Pattis, the young men were less than cordial in their conversation. Later, during his turn at the lectern outside City Hall, he told the crowd what happened and said race still divides people. “When I walk through Woodbridge and I see a police officer, he gives me the smile that assures me, ‘I got ya back.’” He said he knows he becomes entitled to some thing that many other people aren’t because of the color of his skin, and that’s wrong.
The day ended with speakers,rappers and a call by community organizer, Barbara Fair, asking people to come to a rally to “Stop Red Light Cameras” on Monday at 5 p.m. in front of City Hall. Fair will then moderate a Greater New Haven ACLU panel discussion on racial profiling on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Cortland Wilson Branch Library.