When They Call You a Terrorist

In early 2012, while still a member of the Strategy Center, Cullors reads about a self-identifying White man in Sanford, Florida who will not be charged in the murder of a 17-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin, who is Black. As Martin walked home from a convenience store through a gated community, an altercation with neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman ended with Zimmerman shooting and killing the boy. As Cullors tries to process Martin’s death with her anti-racist cohort in Los Angeles, demands for justice grow because of the national efforts of Al Sharpton and the local efforts of Umi Agnew and his Dream Defenders organization. Cullors details Zimmerman’s history leading up to the shooting, which includes 45 calls to the Sanford Police Department to report what he called “suspicious black males” (168). His fiancée also filed a restraining order against him alleging domestic violence. Amid widespread outrage, Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder on April 11, 2012.

On July 13, 2013, the day the verdict is reached in Zimmerman’s trial, Cullors is in Susanville, California visiting Richie, a young man serving a ten-year sentence for a robbery that caused no physical harm. When she reads that the jury acquitted Zimmerman, Cullors is outraged at a system that sends young men like Richie to prison for a decade for nonviolent crimes but lets killers like Zimmerman walk free.