Sybrina Fulton lowers herself into a chair, adjusts the sleeves of her jacket and uses a tissue to gently dab her tearing eyelashes. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she chuckles, “my allergies are doing terrible here in Texas.”
Hours away from being honored at Pat Smith’s first-ever Second Chances For Overcomers event, the community activist and mother of Trayvon Martin is poised and personable, but there’s a somberness to her stature and an undeniable sorrow in her round dark eyes as she discusses life before and after the murder of her youngest child.
“I always tell people that I was an average mom with an average home and an average car that worked for the Housing Authority in Miami, someone who used to only speak to groups of about 100 people,” she says. “Now I’m speaking to thousands. I don’t want them to think that this [spotlight] is something I that I wanted, signed up or applied for, but I feel like it’s important for me to not remain a weak vessel, because then I become a part of the problem. My son is an angel, a boy who died never knowing the person who killed him, and I want to make sure that something positive comes out of this.”
What Fulton refers to is the national uproar after the death of her youngest son. Weeks after turning 17-years-old, the teenager aroused the suspicion of a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, who elected to follow the unarmed Martin, eventually shooting him to death. The 28-year-old was released on a claim of self-defense and wasn’t charged with murder until over a month after the incident.
After the subsequent investigation, the police chief was fired, and the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law was criticized. Fulton is aware that making changes will be an uphill battle, but she is committed to the effort. She’s starting with a protest in Tallahassee when the new legislative session begins on March 10.
“Just because Florida has an issue doesn’t mean I’m leaving Florida, it just means we need to change Florida,” she says. “We do have an amendment that’s pending and has to be approved within the different committees. Repealing SYG altogether would take even longer, so our first step is to amend it.”
When justice can be anything but colorblind, Fulton acknowledges that there’s temptation to return violence for violence. But instead, she implores audiences across the country to get more involved in their own communities and rethink their attitudes about differences and what should legitimately be considered ‘suspicious.’
“You have CNN’s Anderson Cooper and the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, both saying that they wear hoodies everyday to work, yet they never look ‘suspicious,'” she says. “Other races and nationalities all over the place wear hoodies, so was the fear because of the color of Trayvon’s skin? If so, we need to look within and make sure we realize that being uncomfortable with someone doesn’t automatically make them a threat.”
To learn more about the movement to change SYG, what can be done to prevent future tragedies and to donate to the cause, go to http://trayvonmartinfoundation.org/.
