Washington (dpa) – Thousands of Americans rallied Saturday in cities across the country to protest the shooting death last month of an unarmed Florida teenager, in a case that has struck a nerve in a country still plagued by racial divisions. Dressed in black “hoodie” sweatshirts like the one Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot, and chanting “no justice, no peace,” protesters in cities including Washington DC, Chicago, Tampa and Nashville demanded justice in a case that many feel demonstrates lingering racism in American law and society. In Washington DC, as many as 2,000 people came to the steps of the mayor's office for a rally hastily organized over Twitter and Facebook. “Even with all the positive images you might see with Cbama being president and a lot of steps we've made, we're not completely there yet. You can still be murdered for being black in this country,” said Bless Davis, standing in a light rain at Saturday's Washington rally with his son Logan, 3 on his shoulders. The teenager at the heart of the protests was Trayvon Martin, 17, an African-American who was killed February 26 in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando. His apparent killer was George Zimmerman, 28, is white and reportedly of Latino descent. He was a neighborhood security patrol volunteer who was carrying a legal weapon. He reportedly used a racial epithet in a recorded call to police. Sanford police said an initial investigation did not find enough evidence to arrest Zimmerman, who claimed to have acted in self-defense. A grand jury will decide April 10 whether to charge Zimmerman with murder. Saturday's rallies continued several days of protests that started with a “million-hoodie march” in New York and Miami March 21. As many as 8,000 people attended a rally in Sanford the next day, including civil rights leaders from around the country. On Friday, thousands of students in 31 Florida schools walked out of classes in protest, the College Times reported, and the Miami Heat basketball team posed for a photo with hoodies pulled over their heads. President Barack Obama told reporters Friday, “if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” While the protests have been peaceful, public anger about the case remains high. A 68-year-old Florida man was arrested for threatening to kill Sanford police chief Bill Lee Jr, who stepped down Thursday. And at a rally in Sanford Saturday, the New Black Panther Party, a black separatist group, offered a 10,000 dollar bounty for Zimmerman's “capture,” the Orlando Sentinel reported. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” the group's leader, Mikhail Muhammed, told the Florida newspaper. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/qdR8T Tags: Murder, Protests, Trayvon Martin, United States Section: Latest News, North America
