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From the Editors
The not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin has made clear the raw and growing disconnect between the humane and moral foundation of justice and the hard, cold immorality of some of the laws of the land. This verdict compels the American people to choose between justice and the law. There have been similar moments in the American revolutionary experience.
During colonial times, the King of England dictated the laws for the American colonialists. These laws, favoring the King, were unjust to the people. Revolution developed as the people were forced to choose between law and justice. However, they didn’t just one day decide to become independent of the King. The struggle between law and justice was the battleground that educated the people and gave them a vision of a new society.
Some seventy years later, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by Congress and became the law of the land. Slavery was clearly placed as an irreconcilable antagonism between law and justice.
The Abolitionists educated the public. Some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in 1852 wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wrote and spoke for justice. Others, like John Brown did so by openly defying the law. Or, as Reverend Luther Lee, pastor of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Syracuse, New York wrote in 1855:
“I never would obey it. I had assisted thirty slaves to escape to Canada during the last month. If the authorities wanted anything of me, my address was at 39 Onondaga Street. I would admit that and they could take me and lock me up in the Penitentiary on the hill; but if they did such a foolish thing as that, I had friends enough in Onondaga County to level it to the ground before the next morning.”
Today we are witnessing the beginning of a movement that is clearly choosing between law and justice. In North Carolina, more than 900 people from the “Moral Monday” movement have been arrested for protesting unjust laws passed by their state legislators. The Florida Dream Defenders have occupied the State Capitol Building and are drafting Trayvon’s Law, legislation designed to repeal Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law. They are demanding an end to racial profiling by police and the repeal of the state’s school policing standards. More widely known cases such as those of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are part of this as yet disjointed, but growing ground swell demanding justice.
A flood of unjust and repressive laws is passed not only nationally, but in most states. Why? The ruling class is preparing for the inevitable upsurge of the people who are not only losing their civil rights, but are becoming poorer. The ruling class cannot change the concept of justice, but we, the people can change the laws. The struggle for justice is becoming the battleground and we revolutionaries must bring clarity and vision to the fight.
I am in accord.