Speech: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The bitter anger that greeted the not-guilty verdict for Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, continued into a second week with vigils outside federal buildings in more than 100 cities on Saturday, July 20. The call for demonstrations by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and other liberal organizations–and even a rare acknowledgment of the issue of racism by President Barack Obama–showed the wide scope of discontent about the injustice in Sanford, Fla. At the protests, Sharpton and other speakers focused on the upcoming rally in Washington, D.C., to mark the 50th anniversary of a high point of the civil rights movement: the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

With the latest protests, activists are asking whether this marks a new movement against racism. At a forum on July 17, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Chicago activist and author of the forthcoming Rats, Riots and Revolution:…