Several hundred people gathered Sunday for an impromptu rally — organized viaFacebook — to reflect on the shooting death in Florida of Trayvon Martin.
The theme of gathering at the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial statue, in Denver’s City Park, was one of peace and community in the wake of the shooting of the African-American youth.
“It’s important that we are standing here, on what is considered hallowed ground,” said Jeff Fard, known to many as “Brother Jeff,” who helped organize the event.
While the violence that sparked the gathering was against a black teenager, a mix of races and religions were represented.
“How many of us will have to die before we realize our lives have value,” Fard told the audience, circled tightly together. “People are not going to respect our lives until we respect our own.”
The Community Peace Drummers began playing at 2 p.m. with five black youth wearing gray hoodies standing behind them with signs asking rhetorical questions like, “Do I look suspicious?”
Doreen Watson and Sandra Mitchell are two black women who work at Regis University.
“We always tell our students to get involved, and we were talking, and decided that we needed to as well,” said Watson, who teaches criminology and sociology at Regis.
“It hits really close to home and we work with young people all the time,” said Sandra Mitchell, assistant vice president of diversity at Regis University and mother of a 15-year-old boy.
The interfaith and interrace crowd emphasized the importance of sharing one’s own story in order to build a longer term understanding of “the other” groups. One of the afternoon’s mottos was “Nobody’s next.”
“I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being unified around tragedy,” said Taj Ashaheed, an event organizer. “They don’t know what it is like to be black and we don’t know what it’s like to be them.”
Martin was killed on Feb. 26 in Florida by the neighborhood watch captain, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, as he walked home from the store with a bag of Skittle and ice tea, wearing a hoodie.
Gathering the oldest person in the audience, an 85-year-old, and the youngest, a 4-month-old baby, the group poured a “libation of Skittles” in memory of all killed by what they called senseless violence.
“It is community that will turn this around — us coming around in unity,” said Fard.
At 3 p.m., there were 17 drum beats — each representing a year of Martin’s life — and then a moment of silence for Martin and others killed violently.
A march leaving from 10th and Santa Fe and Sonny Lawson Park at 4 p.m. Monday — is slated to converge at Civic Center Park .
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638 or kpainter@denverpost.com
