Events, Issues, and Activism selling discounted books, and chanting every chance they got. Along with their pleas for economic justice came a broader demand for social justice. These marchers chanted on behalf of a living wage, but also for “Money for schools, not for bombs” and to “Restore the VRA.” Another well-represented group were the Black Greeks, whose members carried signs demanding everything from student loan forgiveness to ending mandatory minimums in criminal sentencing. All around, the signs at Saturday’s rally touched on all ten of the original demands of the March. Without a doubt though, the main issue on people’s minds that day was the lack of legal justice afforded people of color, particularly Black males. Coming just a short month after the George Zimmerman verdict, the one person talked about at both rallies more than MLK was Trayvon Martin. His picture was on shirts, his name was on signs, his parents were on the dias. I myself felt an extra inspiration to attend because of that specific injustice. While the original demands spoke of desegregated housing and public accommodations, the loudest demand on Saturday was for an end to racial profiling by the police (or wannabe police) and access to true justice through the court system. Demands were made to repeal Stand Your Ground laws and speakers drew attention to the Stopand-Frisk policies made famous by New York City. One woman I met on Saturday said she believed half of the people in attendance that day would have slept in were it not for the Zimmerman verdict, and she may have been right. Only an ostrich could believe the “justice” meted out by our court system is colorblind, and merely scratching at that surface will reveal how intrinsic class differences are to these outcomes. I myself have been re-inspired in my quest to reform – read: abolish and reinvent from a true perspective of equality – the prison-industrial complex by Michelle Alexander’s incredible book. The sign I carried read: Blacks equal twelve percent of the US population, but 23 percent of the prison population. Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow.
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But my personal critique of the Civil Rights Movement stems from what I see as a shift in perspective from
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true equality to racial equality, and I fear that history will remember the 50th anniversary of The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as a rallying cry for “Justice for Trayvon.” I worry that this means the underlying incentive for the March fifty years ago – the thing that eventually got King killed, economic equality – will once again be overlooked in favor of superficial problems like police brutality. As Rustin and Randolph knew then, the all-too-real consequences of American racism can only be eradicated once we’ve dealt with the all-tooreal consequences of American capitalism. I actually left the rally on Saturday feeling slightly depressed at what I fear will be a need to repeat this event fifty years from now. But I find solace in those words Sharpton delivered. The rallies held to honor the memory of the March on Washington were not intended to be workshops on how to fix the problems still unresolved from half a century ago. Rather, they worked to draw attention to the greater American consciousness that these problems still exist. Racial profiling is a problem. Overturning the Voting Rights Act is a problem. The lack of a living wage is a problem. These problems are real and were on full display those two days. Now it is our job to come together and solve these problems. Thousands came to DC that week, but the real work will be done in our individual communities. I only hope it does not take us another fifty years to do it. Isaac Weiler was born and raised in Englewood, New Jersey, graduating from Dwight Morrow (public) High School. He then went on to Harvard University where he majored in African-American Studies, graduating in 2003. Following undergrad, Isaac returned to New Jersey where he worked as a legislative aide for the Bergen County Freeholders and then the State Assembly. He hopes to return to policy work upon graduating from Georgetown University Law Center in the spring of 2014.