When I was in second grade I walked my first picket line. The teachers in our district went on strike over Halloween, and while other kids went trick-or-treating my Mom dragged my sister and I up and down the picket line handing out hot cider to our teachers, while reminding us to “never cross a picket line.”  It stuck.

When I was in high school I desperately (and embarrassingly) wanted to go to a private school–so much so that I looked up ‘scholarships’ for students of color.  Proud of myself, I presented the brochure and idea to my parents.  I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as I pleaded my case.  It wasn’t anger, it was absolute disappointment.  All I remember is how he told me that public schools put food on the table and a roof over our head—and that no one in our house would “erode the value of the public commons by abandoning it.” This stuck too.

Both of these memories came back to me today, at the Chicago Teacher’s Strike rally. 

Education for the masses and not just for the ruling classes.

Across the country—irrespective of sector—we face a devaluing of public institutions as reform advocates herald private enterprise and its ability to be more efficient, reduce costs and maximize production.  The teachers in Chicago are not just taking on a neoliberal mayor who wants to shift public resources into private hands through business-like management of public schools (CEO’s not Superintendents)—they’re also challenging a powerful education reform movement that is transforming public schools across the United States.

As with other sectors, the privatization that characterizes the ‘education reform movement’ is intentionally designed.  It’s purposely and deliberately implemented–through charter schools and voucher programs aimed at creating a “private market” in publicly-financed education– demonizing traditional public schools and the teachers that staff them in the process, and destabilizing and disorienting whole communities.

To successfully create a national market, the reform movement must reduce the public education system to a shell of what it’s been, and in the process, eliminate the expectation of quality public education as a civil right.   Why are they doing this? Because its big business!  The K-12 market is huge– the U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. Even now, investors are putting private equity and venture capital into ‘education’ companies whose goal is to profit by taking over broad aspects of public education.  Just as corporations are milking the digital divide, corporate profiteers are invading public schools.

So what can we do?

We need to claim a central role for public schools.  Public education requires everyone– we all have a role!  As a community, we need to respect teachers, honor their professionalism, and support the development of their skills.  And, we need to support the strike.

Messages like “legalize,” “we are human,” and “it’s our parents’ fault” not only fail to advance the national narrative on immigration, they also continue an insidious pattern of limiting the agency of migrants and their families.

Too often – even with good intentions – activists focus solely on the problem and external conditions facing our communities, leaving many with a sense that nothing can be done.

Ricardo Levins Morales, a popular cultural worker, reminds us:

“How we think about our world opens up the possibilities for action…The question that I ask myself when working with a community is: What keeps these folks from feeling powerful and acting effectively on that power? Not what external oppressions or conditions are holding people down, but what are the internal impediments? Where can we put the acupuncture needle that’s going to free up the energy and power trapped in a community?”

I thought of Levins Morales’ approach when I saw Julio Salgado’s posters popping up on my Facebook page and on Colorlines.

While he brings up some of the problems faced by communities, Salgado’s art is about making his community visible and unleashing the power of migrants.

As artists working for social change have said for quite some time, art is as much about power as it is about the craft.

And as always, click the “like” button above and share with your friends if you feel this powerful art!

-Samira Sayed –Rahman, Afghans for Peace

On Sunday, May 20^th, veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan and the “Global War on Terror”, led by the Iraq Veterans Against the War, returned their war medals to NATO’s generals, denouncing and calling an end to these senseless wars.

This past weekend, President Barack Obama hosted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit in his hometown of Chicago. It’s the largest meeting in its 63-year history. The Chicago Police Department and Homeland Security declared Chicago, a “National Security Event”, and deployed thousands of federal, state and city law enforcement authorities to clamp down on a peaceful and non-violent display of protest and free speech.  But long before NATO set its eyes on Chicago, the city has had a reputation as a “police state” with a history of encouraging violence against people of color and activists.

NATO’s theme this year was the 12-year war against Afghanistan, repeatedly called by the Bush (and now Obama) administration “Operation Enduring Freedom”.  This weekend, as war generals and government officials met to discuss this continuation of war, the number of soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars climbed to 6428.  According to a recent United Nations report, 2011 was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed.

An Anti-War Video Screens Inside the Walls of Official NATO Summit

A few days before the NATO Summit, the American Civil Liberties Union was able to negotiate 10 minutes in the official General Assembly schedule to present alternative anti-war views to NATO.  I had the pleasure of editing a short 4-minute video, with guidance from IVAW and it that showed on two large 50-foot jumbotron screens during the two-day meeting. Creating videos like this in collaboration with movement-building groups like IVAW and screening in front of  NATO officials, is also the embodiment of media justice.

I felt honored to have had the opportunity to make a small contribution to this important work.  As one veteran put it:

“The enemies are not 7,000 miles away from home [in Afghanistan] they are sitting in board rooms, they are CEOs, they are bankers….and we’ve had enough of it…”

Tracking NATO Protests Through Social Media

On Sunday I, like many other activists and organizers who weren’t on the ground in Chicago, scrambled between #NONATO #NATO twitter feeds, Facebook status updates, choppy live webstream feeds, Occupy Chicago, and other alternative websites, to piece together what was is happening with the protests. The mainstream media, of course did its job of blacking out the large protests from the American people’s consciousness. Instead, the corporate media justified the high level of anti-terrorist security, depicted the protests as “violent clashes” and downplayed the numbers, saying there were only 2000 people marching- despite countless eyewitnesses who reported tens of thousands marching in the streets.  If it wasn’t for network neutrality and Internet Freedom, my ability to access all these sites to construct what was happening would be virtually impossible.

On the ground level, activists took it upon themselves to broadcast what was really happening through live webstreams, filming these actions with their mobile phones.  On the #NONATO and #NATO twitter feeds, messages flooded in reporting on blocked off streets and stories of helping fellow protestors navigate to the march. When asked what the reactions were like from the police to all these cameras in their faces, one livestreamer commented, “they don’t know what to do or how to react. It’s still new to them”.  In the past, authorities could implement their own violent brand of “crowd control” largely unchecked.  Suddenly, the protestors have turned the tables on the police and are broadcasting live the brute force authorities have used against protestors.

In the last few days, dozens of videos shot largely by mobile phones captured the heavy police crackdown on protestors, one even showed someone getting run over by a police van.  Tim Pool, operator of Timcast UStream, a popular livestream, along with two other protest livestreamers were stopped at gunpoint by the Chicago police department in the middle of the night on Saturday and interrogated.  Their car was stopped which held a car full of livestreaming equipment and in real time documented and broadcast being stopped to the rest of the world via the Internet.

MAG-Net Presente!

Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) Chicago Chapter Anchor, Community Media Workshop (CMW) has been planning around the NATO Summit for many months.  They conducted a “know your legal rights” workshop with journalists who were coming into town from all around the world cover the protest.  CMW staffers educated journalists and activists on their legal rights if they were to be stopped and harassed by the Chicago or Homeland authorities as they were covering the protests with their cameras, notepads or mobile phones.  They also started and managed Chicago Stories, a website created for journalists, connecting them with local stories and protests.  Their mission was also to inform the out-of-town journalists what social justice issues Chicagoans face daily. Another regional MAG-Net member, Vocalo.org worked tirelessly to report on the protests and actions, organizing special programs and providing an important alternative platform for organizers and activists to talk about why they were protesting NATO.

All last week, protestors flooded the streets, calling for an end to the U.S. government funding of these current wars, and redirecting money and focus on domestic issues around immigration, housing, education, the environment, labor, the economy. Local social justice groups led many of the protests and seized the opportunity to highlight on a national level the organizing efforts to eliminate poverty and racism in Chicago, Illinois.  Groups also held an alternative to the NATO Summit,  called the “People’s Summit” co-organized by groups like Center for Community, Democracy, and Ecology, CODEPINK, Afghans for Peace and MAG-Net member, Arab American Action Network. Saturday’s protests ended up with a march to the home of Mayor Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel house, former White House Chief of Staff in President Obama’s administration.

Veterans Returning their War Medals 

On Sunday, I watched the Chicago Indymedia’s choppy livestream of the weekend’s largest march.  I couldn’t help but get choked up when I saw members of Afghans for Peace, an international organization of Afghans calling for an end to occupation in Afghanistan and right for Afghan people to self determination march with veterans of the Afghanistan, Iraq and Global Wars on Terror. Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a national veterans group giving voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are often forced to remain silent, tossed their war medals back at the NATO generals.  The medals symbolically represented a rejection of ongoing wars, the continued suffering of the Iraq and Afghan people and shedding light on the deep mental and physical traumas faced by the “working class soldiers fighting the ruling class’s war” as one veteran put it.

Over forty veterans stood on stage, in front the thousands (and the world via livestreams) each having a chance to express their views before they threw their medals over the fence in the direction of the NATO Summit.  Veterans who hurled their medals back to NATO included Scott Olsen, a former marine who survived two Iraq tours but was nearly killed when he was struck by a projectile thrown by the Oakland Police Department during a march at Occupy Oakland back in November. One veteran eloquently said before tossing his medal, “I am returning this global war on terror medal, I’m deeply sorry for the destruction that we have caused around the world.  I’m proud to stand here with my fellow veterans and Afghan sisters.  These were lies.  I’m giving these back.”  Another veteran dedicated his returning of his war medal to his fellow soldiers, “This is for all my brothers and sisters affected with Traumatic Brain Injury, Military Sexual Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” shedding light on their Operation Recovery and Right to Heal Campaign.

Members of Afghans for Peace stood along side on stage holding an Afghanistan flag, as each veteran threw their “Global War on Terror” medals back to NATO. IVAW is demanding that NATO immediately end the occupation of Afghanistan and relating economic and social injustices, bring U.S. war dollars home to fund our communities and acknowledge the rights and humanity of all who are affected by these wars.

Bank of America was taking it on the chin in social media in the lead up to Bank of America’s shareholder meeting happening today in Charlotte, NC.

A quick search for “Bank of America” on Twitter demonstrates the anger from protesters, shareholders and customers that will converge this week for what one group is calling the “Showdown in Charlotte.”

Bank of America even announced a brand advertising move this week. No doubt the Bank would not attribute it to the specific protest, but the bank definitely is taking a brand hit from all the negative publicity.

JOIN THE FIGHT

Part of the campaign is a twitter beef between @bankvsamerica #99Power and @BrianBofA, a parody account of Brian Moynihan, BofA’s CEO.

I had some interactions with him this week:

Join in the fun, and tell “Big Banks Moynihan” just how Bank of America changed to Bank Vs America.

You can reserve ring side seats, see a live stream and get involved at http://bankvsamerica.org.

As usual, if you feel it click the like button above.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people across the globe are coming together to challenge the status quo. While social movements haven’t received this much airtime in a while, mainstream media continues to portray progressive movements like the Arab Spring, the Wisconsin labor movement, and Occupy using the same old rightwing frames that seek to discredit the possibilities of real change. Some of the words and images corporate media have used to describe demonstrations and actions this week and last are “anger,” “gloom,” burning flag,” (Associated Press), “mischief-makers” (Forbes), “besiege,” and “season of acrimony” (Wall Street Journal).

Occupation/decolonization, home takeovers and other direct action—like the powerful 99% Spring takeover of the Wells Fargo shareholders meeting in San Francisco last week—are just some of the important tactics being used by activists and organizers. Culture jamming—the disruption or subversion of mainstream institutions via culture and communications, i.e. appropriating the branding of corporate banking institutions—is another tactic that has been getting the attention of the ruling class.

Last month, the culture jamming activist duo the Yes Men successfully launched a corporate hoax on Bank of America, sending out a mass email announcing a “Your Bank of America” campaign in which customers were invited to shape the future of the bank. Culture jamming often incorporates humor and satire—effective vehicles for messages for social justice—as in the case of YourBofA.com. Mainstream media will still do its best to deride or completely ignore culture jamming tactics (there was only one mainstream media hit about the hoax), but the use of humor and satire can make culture jamming an effective vehicle for social justice messages.

The hoax email read: “We may not have all the answers, but we’re confident that those answers exist,” said Brian Moynihan, Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America. “We want to make sure the American people are well positioned to assert control and implement changes in the direction of banking, in the eventuality that such control becomes feasible.”

The hoax got the attention of the Bank of America and Google, which initially disrupted the site’s availability. The Yes Men—who described themselves as facilitating a project of Occupy Wall Street—clarified that http://yourbofa.com/ was not a phishing site. And, Bank of America emailed a press release to its customers headed by the statement: “The malicious website (YourBofA.com) that is fraudulently representing itself as a Bank of America re-branding effort is misleading the public; those behind it will be prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.”

Ironically, this was great public relations for YourBofA.com. Not only was the URL for the excellently designed site shared, but the press release read: “Banking is too complicated for ordinary people to understand,” said Jeff Walburn, Risk Management, Bank of America. He follows with another patronizing comment, but basically asserts the underpinning message of YourBofA.com—regular folks should have a say in how major banking institutions do business, e.g. with our bailout tax dollars.

*Editor’s note – on May 1st the site YourBofA.com page was taken down.

Subverting culture and disrupting big business are incredible feats in this day and age. With massive conglomeration and globalization being the norm for multinational corporations (including media, telecommunications, and financial institutions), the consequences can be high. It’s a price that movers and shakers have paid for generations and one that is very much alive in the collective memory of those from the global south.

The term “culture jamming” is derived from radio jamming. One famous example of the power of disrupting and seizing communication for the people is Radio Venceremos of El Salvador—the clandestine radio broadcast that denounced the atrocities committed by the United States-backed Salvadoran military dictatorship. The 40-year old radio transmitter and the voice of Radio Venceremos, Carlos Henriquez Consalvi, aka “Santiago,” had evaded military capture for years, but the military’s hunt for the transmitter and the guerilla command post was the impetus for the heinous El Mozote massacre of up to 1,000 villagers.

The struggle to protect the right to communicate is fundamental to all human rights. Creating our own media, and ensuring media access and media conditions that elevate and protect the humanity of all our communities, is a viable platform to advance racial and economic justice. Check out the Media Action Grassroots Network and consider applying for your own community radio station, because the right to communicate should belong to everyone.

While our Chicago Anchor, Community Media Workshop (CMW), aren’t represented at the meeting in person – they’re there in spirit (and even sent a shout-out video to the other anchors).

And even better, we got to catch up with CMW’s Senior Trainer Diana Pando.  Read on to find out more about the work of the organization, what drives her and to get a good news tip.

DIANA PANDO, COMMUNITY MEDIA WORKSHOP – MAG-NET INTERVIEW

Can you tell me about the mission and vision of Community Media Workshop, and who you serve (in your own words)?

Our organization serves nonprofit organizations working on a variety of issues ranging from immigration to healthcare. Our purpose is to empower these organizations with the communications skills and tools they need to tell their organization’s story to the media. We do this by organizing a variety of communications and social media workshops throughout the year.  We also help in sourcing grassroots and community news for journalists. Our goal is to diversify voices in the news and promote news that matters.

What is your role at CMW?  Tell me what an average day for you is like.  What’s a day in the life of Diana Pando?

A day in the life of Diana Pando includes a strong cup of coffee and industrial strength multi-tasking. My role as the Senior Trainer at the Workshop includes: Organizing the 2012 Making Media Connections conference, scheduling and coordinating all of our regular communications and social media trainings and assist in organizing ethnic media department events.  I’ve also done custom communications trainings for the following organizations: Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs – Creative Arts Expo, Department of Family & Support Services, IL Library Association, Region V Headstart Conference, IL Education Foundation, IL Parks and Recreation Association and Telpochcalli Community Education Project.

What does media justice mean for Community Media Workshop?  Why did you all decide to help anchor a Chicago Chapter?

We decided to be a Chicago Chapter anchor because we believe in the media justice work that is being done by MAG-Net and its members. It’s a way for us to educate and spread the word about the work that is being done on media justice issues to our networks. Media justice to Community Media Workshop means strengthening this national movement by helping nonprofits tell their story to the media and diversifying the types of stories being covered in mainstream news.

For you personally, what sparked your interest in media justice work?

Media justice work is a must if we want to strengthen our democracy and include marginalized communities into a larger public narrative and conversation. Currently, there are so many community issues and stories not being covered in mainstream media. A recent example, I came across was a news article called, The Faces of the Forgotten: Missing Black Women Across America.  This article brought to my attention this disturbing issue happening to African-American women but equally disturbing is that I had to read about it in the Daily Mail, a British online news site.

This is just one example of many that exist and trying to figure out how to fill those gaps is exciting. At Community Media Workshop we try to fill these gaps in media through different program initiatives. In the last six-months, we’ve co-launched a Global Chicago Women’s Blogger Initiative, organized a media panel with Black media outlets to help them connect with nonprofits serving the African-American community, in February we launched the Latino Op-Ed initiative to encourage nonprofit organizations working on issues impacting the Latino community to write op-eds that can be used by local media outlets.

Outside of Community Media Workshop, I’m also working on Proyecto Latina’s Reporteras Series. Its purpose is to empower Latina writers to cover issues in Primera Voz and focus on issues impacting the Latina community. What makes this project unique is that it is completely Latina led and we are creating a virtual safe space for Latinas to have conversations about issues impacting them online.

What most excites you about your role in MAG-Net?

What excites me most about our role in MAG-Net is being able to support the work the organization and its members are doing to spotlight media policy issues. It allows us to inform our nonprofit networks in Chicago about these issues as well as what they can do to take action and be part of a larger media justice movement.

What are some of the media policy issues that impact Community Media Workshop and your constituents the most?

In 2010 we published our New News Report and what we discovered through our research was that between 1986 and 2008 the appearance of selected key issue words and phrases like “public housing”, “uninsured” and “school reform”, to name a few, have declined dramatically in the news. The report also found that news media is unlikely to cover your issue. Our constituents are working on a variety of issues that impact communities, and if they can’t get their stories in the media these issues and communities become invisible resulting in a lack of diversity and access to information.  You can read the New News Report here.

What’s your top news tip for the media justice movement?

My top news tip for the media justice movement is to be proactive in your communications. For example, call reporters and find out what kinds of stories they are looking for and be a resource for them. Also, take the time to follow reporters on Twitter and listen to the conversations going on about media justice issues. Engaging reporters online and offline is key to building a strong relationship with reporters.

To get more media tips go to www.communitymediaworkshop.org  and read more about Diana Pando here.

My parents often used stories to teach us some of the values my siblings and I hold to this day. When my father was a boy in rural Korea, he would disobey my grandfather to go to school by throwing his books over the fence and climbing over a tree while his brothers and he were supposed to be working the crops. Hence I learned that education can be invaluable, and that value informs my core belief that education is a human right. I remember the story of my mother’s mother who, after her husband was abducted and her home invaded by soldiers in the middle of the night at the start of the Korean War, took her six children—my mother was just a year old, tied in a cloth to my grandmother’s back—to the safety of the countryside all by herself. This taught me early on of the terrors of war, the terrible cost of war paid for by the lives and wellbeing of women and children, and the deep strength and resilience of the women I come from.

Over the past few years, social movements have been using stories through creative and innovative strategies that touch the hearts and minds of those not in the choir. Some have used popular mainstream culture as a catalyst to tell their stories, such as the Palestinian activists who dressed up as the Na’vi people from the movie “Avatar” to protest Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.

Most recently, the National Domestic Workers Alliance crafted one of the most powerful messages of the decade by using the popular—albeit problematic—film “The Help.”  Strong Families videos (see the Center for Media Justice case study here) elevated the voices and stories of Oakland’s black community to combat the racist anti-choice billboard messages targeting black women.

Stories are powerful. In the struggle for social transformation, we know who the players are, what the conflict is, the human cost, who suffers collateral and direct devastation, and why it matters. We also have the solutions. In the world we live in, it is critical for communities and community organizers to tell both the story in real and moving terms and to allow pieces of the blueprint for the world we want to live in to emerge in the stories we tell. Check out this Center for Media Justice storytelling tool to help craft your own story. And remember, it can’t hurt to incorporate some descriptive adjectives to activate the sensory cortexes of your target audiences!

Background

In 2011, religious conservatives funded an antiabortion campaign that included billboards that cropped up across the country, targeting black women and communities with anti-choice messages like: “The most dangerous place for an African American child is in the womb,” and “Black children are an endangered species.” The billboards perpetuated dangerous stereotypes about black women and aimed to shame black women from having agency over their bodies and reproductive health. Reproductive justice organizers rallied across the country to get the racist billboards taken down. When the billboards came to Oakland, California, in summer 2011, Strong Families, a multiracial organizing project of Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (now Forward Together), contacted the Center for Media Justice to provide comprehensive communications services to help mount a strategic response.

The Challenge

As a grassroots campaign with limited funds and staff, Strong Families knew strategic communications would be essential in a campaign to dismantle the billboards. Though it was apparent that a local anti-choice pastor was partnered with the billboards’ rightwing funders, it was difficult to identify a media target. The billboards initially garnered some attention from local newscasters, but media coverage was vague and largely riding the coattails of the billboard story from other cities. In addition, Strong Families recognized that the news reporting promoted messages and assumptions that the black community is anti-choice. It was clear to Strong Families that their campaign would require creative tactics that went beyond a defensive front in a newsprint war.

Strategy and Execution

Strong Families and the Center for Media Justice quickly assessed that the greatest opportunities lay in creative action that simultaneously advanced racial justice and reproductive justice movement goals. Strong Families’ response had to be smart in how they challenged the racist framing of this anti-choice campaign. It was decided that the most effective intervention Strong Families could devise would elevate the voices of black women and their communities in the public debate—and a powerful video campaign would achieve just that.

Within a day, Strong Families and the Center for Media Justice hit the streets to conduct video interviews with black women, men, and teens in front of the billboards, asking for their opinions on the billboards and on reproductive choice in general. Across the board, interviewees were offended by the messages promoted by the billboards. While opinions on abortion differed, each of the dozens of interviewees we spoke with thought women have the right to make decisions about their bodies and family planning for themselves.

Center for Media Justice edited and placed the videos, and worked with Strong Families to develop an impact strategy. Center for Media Justice upgraded the Strong Families’ website to include an online pressroom, tailored and targeted Strong Families’ press lists, and developed a video marketing strategy integrating new media tactics that would lead to industry media coverage.

Results

The videos were an instant hit online with organizational allies, blogs, and key journalists, and at the time this was written, the Strong Families YouTube channel had almost 24,000 hits, the bulk of which occurred immediately after the billboard interviews were launched. The videos helped Strong Families build its online list of supporters and introduced the campaign brand, using strategic communications to take quick and effective action.

The videos elevated the voices of black Oaklanders talking about the right to choose; the right to healthcare access; and the right to decide when, where, and how to plan a family. Strong Families ensured that the black community itself had a voice in this important conversation—a voice that was being misrepresented by industry media. The Center for Media Justice helped Strong Families create a timely product that filled a strategic void and served as an organizing flashpoint to bring those most affected to the table. Accompanied by a clear distribution strategy that utilized trusted networks and experts, the Center for Media Justice helped ensure that Strong Families maximized its impact.

In the below article, Malkia gets into a discussion with sci-fi enthusiast, musician and fellow social justice movement leader Ying-sun Ho about the Hunger Games book series and how the books can help us to re-imagine movement building.

The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: A Review and Discussion of Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games Trilogy

Imagine a world where the death of children is the sport, vicious economic inequity and competition is the game, and culture is created and manipulated through the daily mechanization of a highly controlled political and media system.  In this world, hunger—deep, seemingly insatiable hunger—is etched into the very rhythm of life. This is not simply a physical craving for food or water, but an existential yearning for freedom, self-determined governance, and the kind of love and hope that can outlast even the most powerful enemies and the darkest of days.

No, I’m not talking about life for the 99% in the present day United States, or the rest of the world for that matter.

This is the post-apocalyptic world of The Hunger Games trilogy a young adult book series conceived and written by New York Times best-selling author Suzanne Collins.  Read the rest here.

Check out the rest of the articles and chime in on Facebook or Twitter to share your thoughts with us.  Do you agree?  Disagree? Talk to us.

In the below article, Malkia talks about why rocking your hoodie for Trayvon Martin is great, but not nearly enough.

Malkia: Memes Are Not Movements – Why the hoodie meme is important, but not enough

I love the hoodie meme.

I love the fact that within days of the revolting shooting murder of the 17-year-old African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by the self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, thousands of unlikely individuals put on their hoodies, took pictures, and shared them through social media.  It was, to be sure, an unprecedented show of national solidarity within an often-ignored pattern, and it brought tears of pride to my eyes.

But the wearing of hoodies alone will not overturn the vicious Stand Your Ground laws that have proliferated throughout U.S. states in the last year.  The hoodie is a meme, but it is not a movement.  And only organized pressure can change the law.  Read the rest here.

Check out the rest of the article and chime in on Facebook or Twitter to share your thoughts with us.  Do you agree?  Disagree? Talk to us.