EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio-Seasoned activist groups such as the Imperial Women, the Carl Stokes Brigade and Black on Black Crime will support the Oppressed People's Nation's "Trayvon Martin Skittles Rally," which is Sat. March 24 at 3 pm at Black on Black Headquarters in East Clevelandat McCall's Hotel, 14660 Euclid Ave.
Contact Oppressed People's Nation event spokesperson Judy Martin at 216-990-0679 for additional information.
Yesterday some 200 community activists, mainly college and high school students, rallied for Martin at Tower City in downtown Cleveland.
Trayvon Martin
The Oppressed People's Nation
"Because Trayvon was murdered and his only weapon was a bag of skittles candy, we urge people to bring a bag of skittles to the rally and we will send them to the Sandford Police Department in Florida," said Ernest Smith, the leader of the Oppressed People's Nation, a grassroots group whose members are in their 20s and 30s. "We are losing too many Black men and teens to unjust killings overlooked by police departments across this nation."
Martin was fatally shot Feb. 26 while walking to the house of his father's fiancee in Sanford, Fl, after leaving a convenience store.
George Zimmerman, a White neighborhood watch leader whom police have not charged, said he shot the unarmed teen in self-defense, though he followed him and gunned him down, community activists say.
And the nation's Black community in general is not buying it with some of Zimmerman's critics branding the child's murder a high tech modern day lynching and Civil Rights activists like the Rev. Al Sharpton and national NAACP President Ben Jealous calling it outrageous and racist.
"We will support the young people leading the non-violent rally tomorrow in East Cleveland to bring attention to the national epidemic as to the unjust and unconstitutional mistreatment of innocent Blacks and women in Cleveland, Florida and across America by insensitive police departments, prosecutors and some racist or anti-Black elected officials ," said Coleman, the leader of the Imperial Women. "And we still want the police and the all non-Black law enforcement leadership team under Black Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson that released serial killer Anthony Sowell on a rape complaint in 2008 so that he could rape and murder the last six of the 11 Black women that he lured to his then home on Imperial Ave. in Cleveland with ease disciplined."
Sandford Police Chief Bill Lee has stepped down under fire, including criticism from Sharpton and Jealous that his failure to charge Zimmerman is motivated by possible racial animus since Zimmerman is White and Martin was Black.
Reach Kathy Wray Coleman by email at kathy@kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, and by telephone at 216-932-3114.
