SAM SANDERS, HOST:
Heads-up before we begin - this episode contains discussions of death and police violence. You'll also hear some 911 tape and a racial slur. It may be difficult for some listeners.
Can you recall where you were when you first heard about Trayvon Martin?
NAILAH SUMMERS-POLITE: Yes, yes. I was a student at the University of Florida. I had been there for about a semester. And I think that the moment it really clicked for me was the 911 calls...
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UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER #1: 911 - do you need police, fire or medical?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Maybe both. I'm not sure. There's just so much...
SUMMERS-POLITE: ...The neighbors calling in to 911...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Police. I just heard a shot right behind my house.
SUMMERS-POLITE: ...You know, screaming...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I don't know why. I think they're yelling help, but I don't know.
SUMMERS-POLITE: ...Yelling that there was, like, a kid in trouble.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: They just said he shot him. Yes, the person is dead, laying on the ground.
UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER #2: Just 'cause he's laying...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Oh, my God.
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SANDERS: That voice you heard earlier - that is Nailah Summers-Polite. She's still in Florida, and she's a full-time activist now.
SUMMERS-POLITE: I am the co-director of Dream Defenders.
SANDERS: That group is fighting for what they call a world without prisons, policing, surveillance and punishment. Trayvon Martin's death led Nailah to that work, but it took her a little bit of time to get there. Really, it took all of us some time to realize just how much Trayvon's death would seemingly change everything.
What in that first wave of coverage of his story and his death stuck out to you the most?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Oh, so much of it. You know, he's from South Florida. He went to Krop High School, which is about 13 miles away from where I went to high school. The fact that he was 17, that, you know, I think he was watching the All-Star Game and went to the store for some snacks. I mean, it was just...
SANDERS: You can recall the story - Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, wearing a hoodie, headed to the store for some Skittles and iced tea. He was in Sanford, Fla., visiting his dad. A neighborhood watch captain named George Zimmerman called 911 on Trayvon.
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GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: A real suspicious guy. It's Retreat View Circle.
SANDERS: Authorities told George to stay in his car, not approach the boy.
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UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER #3: Are you following him?
ZIMMERMAN: Yep.
UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER #3: OK, we don't need you to do that.
ZIMMERMAN: OK.
SANDERS: He did. Neighbors heard shots, and Trayvon never made it home.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Let me start by saying that the purpose of today's rally is to call on Sanford PD to bring Mr. Zimmerman to justice.
SANDERS: By early March, Trayvon Martin's death galvanized a wave of activism all across the country...
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Outrage over the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
SANDERS: ...Activism over the unnecessary killings of Black and brown people at the hands of police or at the hands of people trying to act, themselves, as police. Trayvon became the face of that struggle.
SUMMERS-POLITE: You know, you saw pictures of him in his clothes and wearing the hoodie. And there were so many things to identify about Trayvon, and it was one of the first things that I think really hurt our generation that deeply.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Say his name.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Trayvon Martin.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Say his name.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Trayvon Martin.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Say his name.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Trayvon Martin.
SANDERS: You're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Sam Sanders. And this episode - Trayvon, 10 years later - 10 years of activism, 10 years of Black Lives Matter, 10 years of more deaths and more grief and 911 tape, but maybe also 10 years of progress. We'll hear more from Nailah and how Trayvon changed her after the break. And we'll also hear from Paul Butler. Over the course of his career, he's moved from prosecutor to police reform activist. That's coming up.
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SANDERS: Trayvon's death spurred Nailah Summers-Polite to action. She got involved with some protests and activism at her college, and then a few weeks later, she joined something bigger - this three-day, 40-mile march from Daytona to Sanford, Fla.
SUMMERS-POLITE: My at-the-time boyfriend was living with me. And I was like, I can't not do this, and I'm really scared to go alone. So, you know, this person that had really no interest in getting involved I dragged to Daytona just so that I would have somebody there that I knew. But I felt a deep obligation to be there.
SANDERS: And so how does a three-day march look logistically? You're setting this up with other students and faculty.
SUMMERS-POLITE: Yeah.
SANDERS: Are y'all planning stops and water breaks and bathroom breaks? And where do you stay and what do you wear? Like, how do you plan that?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Yeah. So it looked like sleeping on the floors of Black churches in Daytona and in DeLand and these sort of small towns in Florida along the route. The churches played a huge role. I mean, I think at a couple stops, there was the - spaghetti and garlic bread and...
SANDERS: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
SUMMERS-POLITE: ...Little plastic tubs with Epsom salts so we could soak our feet because we all had blisters. We're walking on the sides of highways and in small towns like DeLand, where people are yelling at us and flying Confederate flags.
SANDERS: What would they yell at you?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Somebody definitely yelled nigger, and I remember that distinctly. And that had happened in DeLand. And...
SANDERS: How did you react?
SUMMERS-POLITE: It was, I think, unsurprising given the setting. It was a dark point in what became this life-changing experience where the support far outweighed the negative. People generally that saw us would honk their horns at us and put, you know, fists out the window. It was, like, I think my first sort of experience with, oh, maybe this is what solidarity is, right?
SANDERS: How did that feel?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Oh, it was so affirming. And just, you know, other people recognize what you're doing, and other people feel enough about this 17-year-old to say something or honk or give some sort of, like, nod in your direction that you're doing the right thing.
SANDERS: I heard y'all sang as you marched. What did you sing?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Oh, gosh. We sang all - we sang lots of things. This was also my first experience with, I mean, really movement, right? There's this deep tradition, deep history of singing and chant. One of the songs that was made up along the march was, (singing) when Zimmerman gets arrested, when Zimmerman gets arrested, oh, how I'd love to sit on that jury when Zimmerman gets arrested.
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UNIDENTIFIED MARCHERS: (Singing) ...Arrested, when Zimmerman gets arrested, oh, how I'd love to sit on that jury when Zimmerman gets arrested.
UNIDENTIFIED MARCHER: Dreamers again (ph).
SUMMERS-POLITE: You know, that's all we wanted. We didn't have an abolitionist sort of politic at the time.
SANDERS: Yeah.
SUMMERS-POLITE: We just knew that this man killed a 17-year-old that looked like us, that looked like our brothers and cousins and our people, and that he had gotten away with it scot-free. And so the deepest desire, what justice looked like then was putting that man behind bars.
SANDERS: So after that three-day march, what happens? Do you keep protesting? Are you like an activist at this point? What is next for you after the march?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Yeah. I mean, the last day is when we went to the Sanford police station to demand the arrest of Zimmerman. So that was, you know, an experience in itself. This sort of confrontation with power was a totally new experience. And so the 40 of us go. Six of the people from that group dress up in hoodies to represent Trayvon, lock arms and sit in front of the door of the Sanford police station all day long. And, you know, it was definitely the first thing of that nature I'd seen.
Towards the end of the day, we get a call from Angela Corey, who was the prosecutor in the area. And it was basically like, what do you guys want? And then Vanessa Baden, I think, was one of the people that took the phone call. And, you know, she's one of our founding members. And, you know, Zimmerman got arrested, I think, three or four days later.
SANDERS: You know, there's a difference between getting someone arrested and getting someone convicted.
SUMMERS-POLITE: Oh, yeah.
SANDERS: So then flash-forward to the verdict.
SUMMERS-POLITE: Right, right.
SANDERS: He's not found guilty. What happens then, and how do you react in that moment?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Oh, my gosh. You know, we wanted to set everything on fire. I mean, we were so - everybody - everybody was heartbroken. It was inside our organization, outside of it, the country. It was heartbreaking. I was at a crappy little gym in an apartment complex with my friends in Gainesville. We were watching the verdict happen. And, you know, at that point, it started to seem like something was amiss, right? They were making a big deal about the lawyer that he hired and that - I think "stand your ground" was becoming more and more a part of it. So we felt like there was anticipation. There was a little bit of, like, trepidation. But I think, ultimately, we were still very young and thought that, surely, like, justice would be on the side of this kid. And so when it didn't happen, you know, tears and anger. And the response was basically like, we can't - this can't just be business as usual. Y'all are going to do your thing locally. Like, go ahead and protest. But Dream Defenders have to show up differently. Like, it cannot be marching in the streets anymore. And so I think maybe a week or two later - and I don't remember what the time difference was, but a week or two later, you know, we're on the way to the Capitol.
SANDERS: Yeah. And not just on your way to the Capitol. From what I understand, y'all occupied the state Capitol for 31 days and 30 nights.
SUMMERS-POLITE: Yes.
SANDERS: What did that look like?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Wow, it looked like this old, historic building where so many bad things happened and so many bad people working, you know, cutting their eyes at us and wondering when the hell we're going to leave. But it looked like a whole lot of excitement and, at the beginning, not a whole lot of plans. Pretty quickly, the plan turned into, like, we actually have an ask, we actually have a demand of the state of Florida to ensure that this does not happen anymore, demanding that Rick Scott, the governor at the time, call a special legislative session for a hearing on Trayvon's Law - what we had dubbed Trayvon's Law.
SANDERS: What was Trayvon's Law?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Yeah, it was a law to combat the school-to-prison pipeline. Then there was the repeal of "stand your ground." There was bias training for police, right? Even then, like, we were talking about police, even though Zimmerman was, you know, a regular guy, obviously, with a God complex. But we knew that there was something about the culture of policing that had to be undone then.
SANDERS: So did that happen? Did the things y'all asked for come to be?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Absolutely not.
SANDERS: How does that feel?
SUMMERS-POLITE: It was one of the biggest lessons that we're still taking into account 10 years later, right? I mean, the governor did not call a special session. He met with us about three days in, you know, was totally - totally blew us off, like, wore Confederate flag boots to the meeting with the Dream Defenders. You know, we were telling him at some point, like, where we were from. One of our members, Curtis, was like, I grew up in Hialeah, Fla., and I was homeless for a time. And Rick Scott's response was, oh, yeah, Hialeah, I know that. I own some hospitals there. Right? So, like...
SANDERS: Really?
SUMMERS-POLITE: ...We show - right. We showed up. We did our damnedest. We had lots of support. You know, Jesse Jackson came. Julian Bond, who was the communications director for SNCC, came by. Talib Kweli - like, Nas shouted us out on Twitter. We just - we felt like we were on to something. And so as time went by and it wasn't happening, we were like, OK, we've got to switch something up.
SANDERS: Yeah. You said earlier that seeing Rick Scott not do anything that y'all asked of him taught you a lesson that is still kind of clear 10 years later.
SUMMERS-POLITE: Yeah.
SANDERS: What was the lesson?
SUMMERS-POLITE: Visibility does not equal power. You can be on the news every day. That does not amount to power. It does not amount to the power to change systems in this country, to change laws - maybe to change some hearts and minds. But in and of itself, it does not materialize into concrete things.
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SANDERS: Coming up, what's changed since Trayvon's death by the numbers?
What was your first thought when you found out about Trayvon's death?
PAUL BUTLER: That here we go again. There's another non-Black person - George Zimmerman identifies as Hispanic and white - who killed a Black person and will probably get away with it.
SANDERS: And how did you feel when you saw the verdict?
BUTLER: I was right. He did get away with it.
SANDERS: Yeah. I will never forget. I called my mother after I found out news of the verdict, and I was pretty distraught. And she was so calm. And I was like, why is she so calm? And she just was so calm because she wasn't surprised. She said to me, well, this is America. And that was all she said.
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BUTLER: My name is Paul Butler. I'm a law professor at Georgetown, a former federal prosecutor. I'm the author of "Chokehold: Policing Black Men."
SANDERS: Paul Butler has thought a lot about the criminal justice system and how it treats Black and brown people. He also used to prosecute those same people.
The anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death is the reason for this conversation. And we should be clear here. Trayvon Martin was not killed by police. He was killed by someone trying to act in the role of police. But Trayvon's death sparked years of protest over policing in America. And now, 10 years since his death and years of marches and activism and so many more deaths of Black and brown people at the hands of police and others, I have one big question. What has really changed?
BUTLER: Sam, a lot has changed, and nothing has changed.
SANDERS: OK.
BUTLER: Depends on the metric. So if the metric is police killing people or police killing Black people, that hasn't changed.
SANDERS: Data shows that over the last decade, police have killed about 1,000 people every year. And Black people are roughly three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. That fact hasn't really changed in the last 10 years.
But Professor Butler says maybe what has changed is perspective. Maybe now more people than ever are actually seeing this disparity for what it is and realizing that people of color in every level of the criminal justice system are treated differently than white people. For instance, this week in rural Georgia, a mostly white jury convicted three white men of federal hate crimes for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man. And professor Butler says we probably wouldn't have seen that happen even five years ago.
BUTLER: I do think that there is a consciousness among white people about how the police act in communities of color. That's different, and it's different because of the movement.
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SANDERS: Professor Butler began his career as a federal prosecutor. And like a lot of young idealists, he wanted to reform the system from the inside. But that idea of reform - he would learn over time that it might not be possible.
BUTLER: We can talk about reform, or we can talk about transformation. If you look at what we try to do now, which is sometimes to bring the federal government in to, quote-unquote, "take over" a local police department, it works in the short term sometimes to make police violence go down if violence means that the police kill fewer Black and brown people. And since it works that way in the short term, that means it saves lives. So it's important, and it's effective, but it doesn't seem to last a long time. It doesn't work everywhere, and it's crazy expensive - tens of millions of dollars.
What a lot of folks in the movement are coming to understand is that reform is insufficient. We didn't talk about reforming slavery. We talked about abolishing it. We didn't talk about reforming the old Jim Crow. We talked about abolishing it. What a lot of movement activists say is that we can't talk about reforming the criminal legal system, the new Jim Crow. We have to talk about abolition.
SANDERS: I hear you, but I just don't know if America is ready for that. And I don't know that all Black people want that.
BUTLER: But that's a different question. Sam, you didn't ask me what America was ready for or what Black people want. You asked me what it would take to make things better.
SANDERS: Yeah. Well, I think about older Black people in my family. There are some moments where they really want the police there, and they like it, and they feel safe when they're around. And I can think of my time working as a journalist where I've had to work hand-in-hand with police officers, and it went well. And I think that for a lot of people - and more than one might suspect - a lot of folks like the police. They like it and they don't want to change it. And I just wonder what you do if you're an abolitionist in the midst of that reality. What do they do?
BUTLER: A couple of things. The first is what we know as Americans is that abolition movements take a long time. It took at least a hundred years to end the tragic institution of enslavement. It took at least a hundred years to end the old Jim Crow, the American apartheid. And prison abolition doesn't mean that we open the doors to every jail cell tomorrow. Think of it as a process of gradual decarceration. We could start with the low-hanging fruit, for example, the 50% of people who are in federal prison right now for nonviolent drug crimes. And so then you just have a different conversation about, are there ways that we can use our Black genius, our American genius, our human genius to think of better approaches to being safe and better ways to make people who caused harm responsible that don't involve locking human beings in cages.
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SANDERS: This move towards considering abolition - it didn't happen for Professor Butler overnight. There were moments in his past life as a prosecutor that set him on that path, like when he noticed who actually ended up in criminal courts.
BUTLER: You would think that white people don't commit crime. You would think that white people don't get into fights. They don't steal. They don't use drugs. But Black and brown people - man, those are some bad dudes. Well, I knew better than that, and I decided at the end of the day that I didn't go to Harvard Law School to lock up Black people.
SANDERS: But the event that really changed Professor Butler's life and his career - it happened while he was working on a big case for the Justice Department.
BUTLER: I got arrested and prosecuted for a crime that I didn't commit. And, Sam, I'm not going to tell the whole story. It was a silly little Fred and Barney dispute about a parking space.
SANDERS: Listen. Those can escalate. I get it (laughter). Go ahead.
BUTLER: Things worked out fine for me. Things worked out fine for me in that case because I had trial skills. The courtroom where my trial was - I've literally prosecuted people in that same courtroom. We made sure that the jurors knew that I'd gone to Yale and Harvard, things that shouldn't make a difference but do. And finally, the thing - the reason that things worked out fine for me is because I was innocent. I didn't have to leave the prosecutor's office after that experience, but I felt like I couldn't stay.
SANDERS: So you had that awakening before the last 10 years of the movement for Black lives. You were clearly on one side of this issue before in the last 10 years, but how have the last 10 years, looking back from Trayvon's death to now, changed you perhaps even more?
BUTLER: They've inspired me. They've given me more hope in white people. They've given me greater pride in Black people. You know, there's a lot of criticism of the movement. For example, people say, well, who's the Martin Luther King? Who's the Malcolm X? And there's not one. And that question kind of reveals the problem. The women who started the movement, who are sometimes identified as three queer women of color, understood that previous racial justice movements always had one leader who was often a heterosexual Black man who was very charismatic and when something happened to that man - he was killed or discredited - just moved on. The movement itself also died. They didn't want to repeat that mistake. And so they said, this is a movement that's not leader-less. Its leader-ful. Everybody's a leader. And at the end of the day, you can't argue with success. The movement for Black lives is really the most transformative, civil rights, social justice movement in American history.
SANDERS: You know, I think about the last 10 years and how it's changed me. I had to cover a lot of this stuff. I covered Trayvon. I covered Michael Brown's funeral. I wrote about a lot of these killings. And I think the biggest, like, aha was realizing, oh, it was never just the hoodie. It was never just the hoodie he was wearing. It was never just the way one of these men had his hands on the steering wheel. It was never just the way that Sandra Bland was talking about her cigarette.
We can find reasons to justify a death, but I think the big takeaway from these last 10 years for me is that none of them are justifiable, no matter what they did. And once you see that, it's like everything is - you - it's hard to look at it the same way. It's not an issue of individual cases. It's a systemic issue. And every one of these deaths is part of a larger system that needs to be questioned. And I think questioning the totality of these systems is a place that I think a lot of Americans have gotten to over the past 10 years. It's never just the hoodie. And I'm sad that it took us - a lot of us - this long to get there, but I think we're there. And I think I'm hopeful about that.
BUTLER: I hope that you're right. I'm concerned that these iterations where there are a lot of people concerned about racial justice are just that. There are moments that that come and go. The cliche is, is this a moment, or is it a movement? I don't think we have enough data to have an answer to that. We know that the common-sense recommendations that would be made law by the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act are stalled in Congress - they're unlikely to succeed. At the same time, we know that after the murder of George Floyd, a number of states all over the country did enact their own statewide criminal justice reform, and it's still too early to get the data to see whether that's making Black and brown people safer on the street. So I think there are reasons to be hopeful, and there are reasons to be cynical.
SANDERS: Yeah. Well, then I suppose that's my last question. You know, in this chat with you, I've heard you say you kind of feel inspired and have hope, and hope in white people, and that this is perhaps the most transformative civil rights movement in American history or at least recent American history. But there are some parts of this conversation where you've said, I don't know if some of these things have changed yet or will change. What does the next 10 years look like? Hearing that ambivalence in this conversation, what do you think it looks like? Are we going to be stuck in the same loop for the next decade or more - a death, a protest and right back to normal - or is there something bigger afoot?
BUTLER: The police are not going to stop killing Black people. They're not going to stop killing Latinx and Native American people in situations in which they would not kill white people. And we must always resist. We must never accept that even when it looks like we're not winning. And I don't know if we're going to win on this, but during this Black History Month, I know that, Sam, you and I come from a people who don't give up. And that's my work. You know, sometimes I wonder who - what I would have done if I'd been an enslaved person back in the day, and I hope that I would have been a runaway. I hope that I would have been one of those people who led uprisings. The reality is that's not what most enslaved people did. And then if I'd been active in the '60s when my mom marched with Martin and took it to the streets with Malcolm, I hope I would have been right up there with her. The reality is, that's not what most Black people did. And the movement for Black lives, the expression is, if you want to know what you would have done back in the day, ask yourself, what are you doing right now? Because this is one of the most important social justice movements of our time.
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SANDERS: You know, I think about him so much. I think about Trayvon so much. He would have been 27 years old now. He would have had a birthday in February of this year, on the 5, and I just think about what I was doing when I was 27, and it was so much fun. I was living in the city. I had my first serious job. I had roommates who I loved, and, like, life just seemed like a sitcom. And I - he never got that. I think about it all the time. Sorry, it's not a question.
BUTLER: And all he was doing was going to 7-Eleven to get some candy for his brother.
SANDERS: Yeah. Skittles and tea - Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea. You know, it's funny I'm having this conversation with you, not even realizing that I'm wearing a hoodie right now. And I remember after he died being so afraid to wear my hoodie. And I don't know. I don't know how to - I don't want to overthink the symbol of what this is, but I'm wearing it now, and let's say I'm wearing it for him. That's what I'm going to say.
BUTLER: And I'll say right on, my brother.
SANDERS: Yeah.
BUTLER: May his memory be a blessing. May the memory of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland and George Floyd and all of the marchers - may their memories be a blessing. And may they symbolize the transformation that we must have.
SANDERS: And may we always say their names. May we always say their names until the days that we die - always.
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SANDERS: This week's episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by Andrea Gutierrez, Anjuli Sastry Krbechek, Liam McBain and Jinae West. Our intern is Aja Drain. Our fearless editor is Jordana Hochman. Engineering help came from Peter Ellena. Special thanks this week to Kristin Henning, Asha Ransby-Sporn, Brea Baker and Phillip Agnew. And our big boss is NPR's senior VP of programming, Anya Grundmann.
All right, listeners, till next time, be good to yourselves. I'm Sam Sanders. We'll talk soon.
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