Equipos de prueba

In this concluding chapter, I argue that because liberal freedom has dominated U.S. and Western nation-state formations and sustainability, a Black sense of freedom must do the work

29 This is a direct quote from the website.

of radicalizing the questions asked about freedom. Black Lives Matter is the fitting conclusion to this conversation (for now) because it is premised upon the most radical question we can ask:

how different do our notions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness look if we affirm that Black Lives Matter?

The current movement for Black Lives Matter operates within the logics of my dreamscape. As key theorist of Black surrealism, Robin D.G. Kelley (2002) argues when we

“plung[e] into the depths of the unconscious and less[en] ‘the contradiction between everyday life and our wildest dreams’ we can enter or realize the domain of the marvelous” (158). Dreams operate as revolutionary material in their ability to provide us with the landscape of

transformative possibility.

One of #BlackLivesMatter founders Alicia Garza states:

Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

Our current society does not deem Black life valuable. As a result, Black men, women, and genderqueer people are marked as deviant bodies in need of correction and/or disposal. The movement for Black Lives Matter comes out of this history, and is sparked by the current climate in which Black people are killed with impunity. Its whole purpose is to draw attention to the fact that for all of American history Black people have served as disposable bodies, thus, Black life holds no value or worth. The following case explores the necessity for a movement claiming Black Lives Matter.

On February 26^th, 2012, a mixed white and Hispanic man by the name of George Zimmerman stalked and killed unarmed Black seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Martin was walking back to a family member’s house from a 7-11 carrying a bag of skittles and an Arizona

iced tea. Zimmerman was on neighborhood watch when he saw Martin, and assumed that he was

“up to no good”. Zimmerman then proceeded to call the cops, while following Martin. On the recording of the 911 call, Zimmerman’s is heard telling the dispatcher “This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around.” The dispatcher then proceeds to ask Zimmerman if he is following him, to which he replied, “Yes”.

The dispatcher responded “Ok. We don’t need you to do that.” Zimmerman continued to follow Martin, and resulting in a confrontation, which ended with Martin being shot in the chest and killed by Zimmerman.³⁰

What followed led to widespread discontent and quests for justice by the Black

community. Law enforcement arrived at the scene to find an unconscious, unresponsive Martin face down in the grass, and Zimmerman standing nearby. After trying to revive him for six minutes, police pronounced Trayvon Martin dead, at 7:15pm. The killing of an unarmed Black teenager by a citizen playing cop, made national headlines. The narrative, however, was not that Zimmerman should be held accountable for murder, but instead about what Martin did to

provoke this response. Suddenly, Martin was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder.

This can be seen in the various news reports of the events:

CNN reporter Greg Botelho begins his coverage of the story with a description of Martin’s activities prior to his interaction with Zimmerman. Before discussing

Zimmerman, Botelho goes on to state: “Martin didn't live in Sanford, a central Florida city of about 53,000 people. Yet by that winter night, he'd been there for seven days, after being suspended for the third time from Dr. Michael M. Krop High School in Miami, in this instance, for 10 days after drug residue was found in his backpack, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald” (2012).

30 This information is from the 911 call that Zimmerman placed minutes before Martin was killed.

Multiple news sites have reported the same information regarding these few details regarding how and why Trayvon Martin was killed. This is the only information that is shared by these sites as the narrative of the cause and “justification” for the killing of seventeen-year-old Martin differs

depending on who is telling the story.

NBC News does similar work by criticizing the images used of Zimmerman and Martin arguing: “When he was shot, Trayvon Martin was not the baby-faced boy in the photo that has been on front pages across the country. And George Zimmerman wasn't the beefy-looking figure in the widely published mugshot… A more complex portrait of the two figures has emerged since then. A photo of a beaming Zimmerman looking sharp in a jacket and tie has come out, along with a more recent picture of Martin, with gold teeth and a white sleeveless undershirt. At the same time, it was learned that Martin had been suspended from school for marijuana residue in his backpack.”

ABC News goes further noting: “While in life Trayvon Martin was barely 17, when it comes to justifiable homicide his size -- about 6-foot-3 and 150 pounds -- makes him an adult in death” (2012).

These snippets of national news coverage of the case, illustrate that mainstream news sources were representing Trayvon Martin responsible for his own death because of Blackness, size, and academic record. Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi affirm

#BlackLivesMatter emerges out of the news coverage, which scrutinized and critiqued Martin’s being and persona in order to justify his murder. Martin is written off as deserving the fate that befell him because he occasionally smoked marijuana and was suspended from school. The fact of the matter is, however, that Zimmerman found just cause to follow and confront Martin because he was a Black male, in a hoodie, who was “out of place” in the gated community.

Trayvon Martin does not stand alone as a Black body seen as threat to safety.

Black Lives Matter emerges as the current movement for racial, gender, ability and sexual liberation because it critically engages with the fact that the U.S. state’s domestic and international security frameworks position Black lives as a threat to the securing of the nation-state (Davis 1998; Puar and Rai 2004). Turcotte (2011) contends with this narrative to illustrate how new and old forms of anti-blackness culminate to produce the criminalization of Black communities. She goes further explaining,

[i]in the contemporary ‘wars on terror,’ production of violent brown and black male bodies as threats to national and interpersonal security has been accomplished by naming

such bodies ‘terrorists’ and ‘gangs,’ an approach that has proven productive for U.S.

geopolitical agendas of fear mongering, war making, and global citizenship production”

(Turcotte 2011: 202).

Martin’s death is argued as self-defense because as a tall Black male in a hoodie he falls within familiar tropes of Black violence and criminality (Harrold 1999; Egerton 1999). This combined with U.S. state emphasis on securing the nation both inside and outside its borders leads to a critical moment where fears of Black people are no longer about the threats they pose to the individual, but to the productivity and union of the nation-state (Lipschutz and Turcotte 2005: 37). At the same time, it becomes the patriotic duty of the law-abiding citizen to do the work of securing the nation (Grewal 2006: 28). Zimmerman can effectively argue for the legitimate killing of Martin under Florida’s “stand your ground laws”, which operate within the logics of U.S. state making and securitization, because he was protecting his “home” – the streets of his neighborhood – from a “thug” or “terrorist”.

I have chosen to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Trayvon Martin’s death because they provide a meaningful contribution to this conclusion in three separate but

interconnected ways. First, Trayvon Martin’s death serves as a defining moment in the evolution of movements seeking a Black sense of freedom. Garza states “I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed” (2016: 23).

Black Lives Matter is committed to the critical analysis of how Black people and lives are marked for disappearance, violence, and violation. Second, it illustrates why this is a movement and not a moment. Third, he exists within my dreamscape. Martin is one of the bodies I must bury and whose voice is incorporated into my being.