My experience started when the NAN website coordinating the national protests was posted on reddit.com/r/trayvonmartin. I contacted the listed organizer, named Chas Moore, and asked for additional information. I received the link to this facebook group. Later, I would meet the leaders of the event including Chas Moore (NAN), Lucian Villasenor (Int. Socialist Org.), Sterling Lance, and Ana Correa (texascjc).

The time and place was Noon on Saturday at the state capital. I reached out to my friends in the Austin Police Department to make sure they were aware of the gathering, and prepared for potential violence or rioting. I was concerned about this growing list.

Unable to contact my friends in the police, I continued with my plans to attend the rally. I immediately had some female friends design and construct my sign. Unfortunately, due to the heat and lack of fellow Zimmerman supporters to delegate holding of the sign to, I decided to leave it in my car. (Don’t tell the girls, they worked hard on that sign!)

The morning before the rally, I printed most of my source material and organized it into a binder in the event I needed facts. This took a little more time than I anticipated. I ended up running about an hour late to the rally.

I parked as close as I could to the state capital and began my own version of Dante’s Inferno. As I approached the capital building, I could hear the speakers before I could see the crowds. The first person I encountered in the crowd had a symbol on his chest I instantly recognized. It was the masonic symbol I had seen Tracy Martin with on several occasions. This man was with some black fraternity members.

Up on the stage, other fraternal members stood side by side with black men in camouflage.

Turning my attention to what was being said I began to listen to the speakers. The first such speaker was a blimp of a man, acting as the MC. He began to introduce the next speaker as this woman stepped down. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200200862534658 She described herself as an “activist”, and promptly left to attend the funeral of another local activist.

The next speaker stepped up to the stage. A young hispanic man introduced himself as Lucian Villasenor, a member of the Socialist movement.

Lucian preached of racial injustices. His Grievances included the “Stop and Frisk” laws of New York, to which he attributed Zimmerman’s egregious not guilty verdict. Lucian continued his theme of victimization by bringing up such injustices as “Stand your ground”.

Lucian lamented the fact that local governments increased spending on police and law enforcement as urban population increased. His solution to society’s woes is to decrease spending on peace-keeping efforts and to fire the “magic bullet” of a societal “jobs program”. Lucian concluded by bringing up the “Marissa Alexander” case, using it as depiction of racial injustice inherent in the system.

Somehow, Lucian is oblivious to the fact that police and law enforcement are, in fact, jobs. Fortunately, my contact with Lucian was limited afterwards to a brief conversation about the Marissa Alexander and Zimmerman cases. I informed him that “stop and frisk” was indeed not Zimmerman’s legal defense in his controversial murder trial. I shot down his next assertion that “stand your ground” was involved in the Zimmerman trial as well. Informing him that Zimmerman’s legal defense was basic self defense. Lucian then incorrectly assumed Marissa Alexander also used basic self defense (she used stand your ground) and was wrongly convicted. Upon being informed that the “warning shot” marissa fired could have killed, or wounded an innocent bystander like her two children in the room, Lucian shook his head and walked off. I would limit my further contact with Lucian for fear his ignorance may be contagious.

Next, the MC and Chas Moore took the mic and paused for a brief rap music break. During this a teenager in the crowd suffered heat stroke and lost consciousness. An ambulance quickly arrived, and the child is presumed to be safe and fully recovered.

Ana Correa spoke next. She is from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition(texascjc.org) .

She explained that her group lobbies the state congress for various issues. Ana again decried the stand your ground laws. After that, her speech began the day’s theme of avoiding anything to do with the Trayvon Martin case. Ana went on to explain her issues with the criminal justice system. She rose points like, “If hispanics and blacks were incarcerated at the same rates as whites, 50% of our nation’s prison population would vanish overnight.” She brings up the first thought that popped into my head, that her detractors counter this point by saying that “hispanics and blacks commit more crimes”. Emphatically, she denies this argument stating, “hispanics and blacks have higher conviction rates, arrest rates, and longer sentences”.

Personally, I was intrigued. My opinion is that her logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Blacks and Hispanics have to be committing more crimes and more severe crimes to be convicted at higher rates and have longer sentences. My opinion is that we must change culturally away from drug and gang culture to solve these problems, not merely attempt to treat the symptoms of higher incarceration rates. As a hispanic man myself, I was deeply saddened that this clearly intelligent hispanic woman was standing with the black community perpetuating a persecution of fellow hispanic, George Zimmerman.

Next was a black man bringing up Martin Luther King. A glimmer of hope shot through me that he might mention Dr. King’s relatives siding with Zimmerman. Instead he argued that Dr. King committed a fallacy when arguing for non-violence. I was shocked. According to this man, for non-violence to work, the oppressors must have a conscience. To this man, The United States of America does not have a conscience.

Luckily, perhaps ironically, Sterling Lance spoke next about keeping the rally a non-violent one. After his brief speech, we marched 7 blocks from the state Capital building to the Federal Courthouse.

During the Marching, several chants were well, chanted. The chants included, “No Justice, No Peace!”

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151581324908177 Others included, “Criminal Justice is a lie, They don’t care if black people die!”, and “I am Trayvon!”

En route to the federal courthouse, I spoke with a Police unit following the march. He informed me that the group did not get the appropriate permits, and was therefore supposed to stay on sidewalks. I told him that, “They don’t have any facts either.” and earned myself a smile and a brief nod.

Once at the Federal courthouse, I met a pair of men from the Southern poverty Law Center (http://www.splcenter.org/) . They were collecting donations. They seemed rather proud that they “took on hate groups”. They claimed to have sued the bejesus out of over 12 KKK chapters, effectively disbanding them. Before I could ask them what they planned to do about the Black Panther Party putting a price on Zimmerman’s head, a woman interjected herself into our conversation so that she could give them some money.

Taking in all of the signs, I noticed many of them were factually inaccurate. Most were about the Trayvon Martin case. None really stuck out to me, but I tried to document as many of them as I could.

Several hours later a young white female would show up with a sign reading, “As a white person, I am NOT Trayvon Martin – What’s it going to take to dismantle this racist state?”. This reaked of white guilt to me.

The rotund gentleman again took his role as Master of Ceremonies. More speakers took to the microphone. One such speaker was a representative of the Austin Chapter of the NAACP, he spoke at length about the recent Supreme court decision on the Voting Rights Act. His solution? Elect people to pass legislation ruled unconstitutional agian. Next he spoke on Galveston, a local coastal city devastated by storms. He also reminded people of an August rally for the NAACP. A woman in the crowd asked him about the jury selection process and Ana Correa chimed in about recent legislation pushed in the state house.

The next speaker was Chas Moore, if I remember correctly. He spoke on how racial divides were shrinking in our nation over time. His belief is that his white friends who grew up with him in the “Hood” were not racist. Continuing with a theme of Black victimization he explained how he thought the black community has been “programmed”. He argued for convicted felons to be able to vote to increase the black community’s political power. A hysterical laughter broke out when he said, “Little girls can twerk better than they can do their homework”. Chas claimed that young black females dream of becoming strippers when they grow up at age 16 and how this was a problem that needed to be solved , but offering no solution.

An hour or two had passed during these speakers at the Federal Courthouse building. Something very curious began to occur. A separate group of speakers with heavy duty sound equipment appeared. They all wore matching shirts reading, “Israel Under Christ”. This group startled the main

congregation and they began chanting, “The people united, will never be divided!”.

Curious I moved to listen to them briefly. They were reading from the bible, preaching a message of black prophecy of biblical proportions. Preaching that only Israelites (blacks, hispanics, and Native Americans) can go to heaven. Criticizing the same bible they received these prophecies from because it was written by the “white man”. However, their message was not entirely spiritual. They continued the theme of black victimization. Mentioning slavery as much as possible, and how the Zimmerman not- guilty verdict was a result of black people not running the American Justice system. (Don’t mention Eric Holder to them.) On a solitary positive note, they did advocate the creation of black-owned businesses and the support of such institutions.

Overall it was an interesting experience. The themes of Black victimhood, and speaking on issues that had nothing to do with Trayvon Martin seemed to dominate the day. A sign-up sheet was passed around to organize future political endeavors. Only time will tell how effective that will be.

Lucian posted https://www.facebook.com/events/531600480222364 to the NAN rally facebook group. I plan on attending. At one point I had the opportunity to take the microphone and offer my informed opinions on the Trayvon Martin issue. Confronted with the fact that I was likely the only Zimmerman supporter in the crowd, I kept silent. It is a great shame of mine that I did not have the strength or courage to stand up and be heard. Perhaps I can correct that failure on Wednesday.