Students in Tallahassee will come together Monday to support a cause that is near and dear to many of their hearts.
Students from Florida A&M and Florida State will be meeting at 8:30 a.m. to march along Gaines Street to the Capitol in honor of Trayvon Martin.
Monday is the national day of rallying for the Trayvon Martin case. A bus left for Sanford, Fla. Thursday from New York.
The community, as well as students from FAMU, FSU and TCC that cannot make it to Sanford, still intend to show their support by rallying in town.
Ciara Taylor, one of several rally coordinators and a fourth-year political science student, from Vero Beach, Fla., has been active in the Tallahassee community and on FAMU’s campus working hard to make sure that Martin’s death does not go in vain.
“This case is an issue of racial profiling,” said Taylor. Students need not be naive in thinking that this case has nothing to do with them because this could have happened to any student of color.
At a rally on The Set Monday, students were asked to raise their hands if they had ever been stopped while driving because they were black, or questioned as to why they were walking in a certain neighborhood simply because of their skin color. Numerous hands reached for the sky.
Students believe that the law should be left to law enforcement, not taken on in case-by-case scenarios.
“We are rallying because we cannot continue to let vigilantes think they have the power to take a life under any circumstances,” said Michael White, a third-year allied health student from Tampa.
Students in the Tallahassee plan to dress in hoodies and dark clothing and rally in honor of young Trayvon Martin, in an effort to stop racial profiling altogether.