August 2013


www.hamptonroadsmessenger.com Your Opinion Matters


Trayvon Martin: More Than a #HoodiesUp Hashtag


BY SANDIP ROY SAN FRANCISCO


-- The woman in the pink stretch pants walked out of Theatre 15 holding her tray of movie theatre goodies -- an almost empty tub of popcorn, a large cup of soda. Her shoulders were shaking as she walked. She was weeping.


"He was just trying to go home,"


she told the man with her. "He was just trying to go home."


She was repeating a line from the


film we had just seen. Fruitvale Station was based on one day, the last day, in the short life of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III. It was the early hours of New Year's Day 2009. Grant was coming home in the subway to Oakland from having gone to San Francisco to watch the fireworks with his friends. His mother had told him to take the subway because she was worried about drunk driving. Grant never made it home. An altercation with the subway police suddenly turned fatal. A police officer fired a shot at Grant while he was lying on the ground.


As he lay bleeding on the platform,


he pleaded, "We're just trying to get home."


They were all trying to get home


-- Oscar Grant in Oakland, Trayvon Martin in Florida, or the woman who was raped in a bus in New Delhi and christened Nirbhaya or the fearless one by the media, or the woman gangraped on her way back from college in Kamdhuni near Kolkata. They didn't want to spark off great protests. They didn't want to become symbols, placards or posters. They didn't want docudramas made about their lives.


One kind of iconic heroes -- like


the young man who stood before the tanks of Tiananmen Square or the monk who set himself on fire in Vietnam -- are men and women who deliberately embrace a certain heroism. But the Grants and Nirbhayas are a different breed of heroes -- the accidental kind, ordinary people just trying to get home.


The release of Fruitvale Station


coincided with the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin. The 17-year-old was gunned down in a gated community in Florida, where he was staying with his father's fiancée. Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch coordinator thought Martin looked suspicious in his hoodie, like he was up to no good. By the time the police arrived, Martin had been fatally shot in the chest. Zimmerman pleaded self-defense. On July 13, a jury found him not guilty of second degree murder or even manslaughter.


Now Trayvon Martin too is a


poster, a hashtag, #HoodiesUp, a chant on the street.


"Trayvon Martin did not have


to die. We all know the reason why, the whole system is guilty," chanted hundreds of marchers as they walked through downtown San Francisco carrying placards with Martin's name, beating drums, shouting slogans. "We


are all Trayvon Martin now," read the banners. But we are not, really. Just as we are not all Oscar Grants. Or Nirbhayas. These were individuals, not ideas, not symbols. These were people with flawed, ordinary lives which ended in a tragic moment of injustice. It's the imperfections of these lives that make the deaths so individually poignant.


In Fruitvale Station, we see Oscar


Grant struggling with his relationship. He had lost his job because he was habitually late, he had a stash of drugs and a bit of a temper. But on that last day, he bought crabs for his mother's birthday, flirted with a young white woman at a supermarket and played with his little daughter. As the credits roll you realize this man will never again give his daughter a piggy back ride, will never fight and make up with his girlfriend, will never put gas in his car. The movie restores to Oscar Grant his ordinary humanity, flawed and real. In Fruitvale Station, he is once more a person instead of a rallying cry for protester or a punching bag for his opponents.


In the court room, the defense


tries to put the victim on trial. Kolkata's Park Street rape victim finds her character shredded in the public square because she was drinking at a night club. Martin's mother is asked in court if she was avoiding the fact that her son could have done something to cause his own death. To counter those attacks, we look for the perfect innocent victim whose wholesomeness makes them unassailable. And in doing so, protestors often forget that essential humanity of the victims they put on their posters.


I walk out of Fruitvale Station


wondering why HoodiesUp is the hashtag of the day when Oscar Grant didn't have his hoodie up. Then I realize I am confusing Grant with Martin, their stories blurring into one.


"It's important to remember the


work of justice is a communal effort," said Rev. Theon Johnson III from the United Methodist ministry of Glide Church. "We have to stand up for the sake of all the Trayvon Martins." But the "communal effort" doesn't mean we are all Trayvon Martin now. It just means that in Trayvon Martin's short tragic life we might see a shadowy reflection of our own.


"If I had a son, he'd look like


Trayvon," said President Obama in the aftermath of the shooting. At the rally protesting the verdict in San Francisco, Cinnamon echoes the sentiment: "I work with high risk youth in Berkeley. I have a brother the same age as Trayvon. Some of my students knew Oscar. So I came out."


Maya Robinson Napier too is


The Hampton Roads Messenger 15


worried about her husband and her father. As the protesters shouted in Union Square surrounded by curious tourists, cops in blue uniforms and the great buildings of Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany's, Napier shakes her head.


"We are standing here with all this


Louis Vuitton and stuff. And this kid had nothing. And what he had they took away from him," she said. "He was not


a perfect kid. But he didn't deserve to die."


Her voice shook. And a tear


trickled down her cheek. More than the angry slogans about white supremacy, black incarceration rates and rotten systems, that tear felt real, restoring for a moment, through its quiet mourning, the humanity of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.


Why Workers’ Rights Are an Internet Freedom Issue


BY JOSEPH TORRES When Mariana Cole-Rivera


posted a question on Facebook about her workplace, she got fired.


Four colleagues at Hispanics


United of Buffalo who had responded to her post were also dismissed.


Federal law protects employees’


rights to discuss workplace issues — even when those discussions are critical of an employer. In recent years, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has made several rulings to ensure federal law also protects discussions that take place online.


Last year, the NLRB ruled that the


online free speech rights of Cole-Rivera and her colleagues were violated.


“Many view social media as the


new water cooler,” NLRB Chairman Mark G. Pearce told the New York Times earlier this year. “All we’re doing is applying traditional rules to a new technology.”


But the agency’s ability to protect


the free speech rights of more than 80 million private-sector workers may be in jeopardy if the Senate doesn’t act to approve pending nominations to the NLRB. This vote doesn’t apply just to union workers; it affects the free speech rights of the entire U.S. workforce.


And if you care about Internet


freedom, you should care about what’s happening at the NLRB.


The NLRB was founded in 1935


to enforce our nation’s labor laws. The agency’s five-member board is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But Senate Republicans filibustered several of President Obama’s nominations during his first term.


In 2012, Obama made three recess


appointments to the NLRB that allowed the agency to have a quorum, but a federal court ruled earlier this year that those appointments were unlawful because the Senate was still technically in session when they were made. The


administration objected and challenged the ruling.


Last month, the Supreme Court


agreed to hear the case, which could have major legal ramifications on recent NLRB rulings and presidential- recess appointments.


Meanwhile, the Senate has still


neglected to vote on Obama’s five pending nominations — of three Democrats and two Republicans — to the NLRB. If no one is confirmed by late August, the agency will lack the quorum necessary to take any actions.


This scenario could have a


chilling effect on employees’ rights, including their freedom to speak freely online about workplace issues. And if corporations and other private employers know the NLRB cannot act, it may embolden them to clamp down harder on workers’ rights.


This is especially troubling since


the NLRB general counsel has said the agency has witnessed a “strong uptick” in the number of social media cases it has dealt with in recent years. There have been more than 100 since 2010.


Last year, for instance, the NLRB


issued a report that found companies like General Motors and Target either violated, or partially violated, labor laws by trying to control their employees’ social media activities. It was the third report the agency has released that provided guidance on how employers should craft lawful social media policies.


To ensure the NLRB has


the quorum it needs to protect workers’ rights online and off, the Communications Workers of America is spearheading a campaign — “Give Us 5” — that pushes the Senate to schedule a vote on the president’s pending nominees.


If the Senate fails to take action to


ensure the NLRB remains a functioning agency, it may no longer be safe for workers to gather at water coolers on site or online to discuss workplace issues.


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