Today and Monday: Trayvon Martin protests planned in Baltmore
Above: At March 2012 Baltimore protest, a woman holds the items teenager Trayvon Martin was carrying when George Zimmerman approached and eventually killed him.
Members of the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly said today they are planning two rallies – at 5 p.m. today and at 5 p.m. tomorrow in McKeldin Square – to protest the jury’s “not guilty” verdict in the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
“It is an outrage that not even a manslaughter conviction was given,” said the Rev. Cortly C.D. Witherspoon, president of the Baltimore chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, speaking this morning along with a half a dozen others at McKeldin Square at Pratt and Light streets.
“This is reminiscent quite frankly of the murder of Emmett Till in the 1950s,” Witherspoon said, noting that Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict came from an all-white jury.
“This sends a message. A vicious evil message,” Witherspoon said, observing that if Martin, who is black, had committed the crime, instead of the shooter, George Zimmerman, “we are confident he would have been charged not just with second-degree murder but first-degree murder.”
Below are Witherspoon’s comments this morning.