Public University Pays $3,500 For ‘Hoodies Up’ Speech From Trayvon Martin Personal Injury Lawyer

Close to four years after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in 2012, and over two years after Zimmerman was acquitted in a criminal trial, an attorney for Martin’s family is still cashing in on the case with speaking engagements.

Later this week, on Sept. 10, attorney Jasmine Rand will deliver a lecture entitled “I Am Trayvon Martin: Hoodies Up” at the taxpayer-funded University of Georgia, reports The College Fix.

The personal injury lawyer appears to have a standard “Hoodies Up” spiel that involves the “use of the media to further a social justice cause” and her “experience as a professor that encouraged her students to work side by side on her case and launch what became an international movement.”

“From her students lips to President Obama’s ears, upon the announcement of the not guilty verdict, the President of the United States stood by the family and said, ‘I too Am Trayvon,'” Rand’s lecture description also states.

The full description of Rand’s lecture is “I Am Trayvon Martin: Hoodies Up — How One Case Changed a Nation & Ignited the World.”

Rand continues to believe the Florida jury that decided in Zimmerman’s favor reached the wrong verdict. The fight between Zimmerman and Martin that escalated into a fatal shooting was a “human rights” violation, Rand believes.

“If you break down every aspect of the Trayvon Martin case, things that are tangible and things that are intangible, you’re dealing with civil and human rights, and so much of that is not quantifiable in a traditional sense,” the trial lawyer said, according to a glowing UGA Today press release. “So there are certain aspects that have a very real influence on leading a movement and creating social change and changing the law that have nothing to do with black letter law.”

The University of Georgia’s Institute for African American Studies is sponsoring Rand’s lecture.

Rand is a 2004 graduate of the school. She majored in African-American studies and political science.

After Zimmerman was acquitted in his criminal trial, the U.S. Department of Justice eventually announced in February 2015 that it would not seek federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman.

When the Zimmerman criminal trial verdict was announced, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania argued that the verdict demonstrated that God is a racist who opposes black people.

“God ain’t good all of the time,” the professor, Anthea Butler, declared. “In fact, sometimes, God is not for us. As a black woman in an [sic] nation that has taken too many pains to remind me that I am not a white man, and am not capable of taking care of my reproductive rights, or my voting rights, I know that this American god ain’t my god.”

In April 2015, the University of Georgia hosted a psychology professor, Enrique W. Neblett, Jr., who lectured about his belief that racism causes black college students to gain weight during the first year on campus.

The Story Behind Bobby Rush, the Hoodie-Wearing, Trayvon-Supporting Congressman

Daily Beast Mar 28, 2012
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/28/the-story-behind-bobby-rush-the-hoodie-wearing-trayvon-supporting-congressman.html

Wednesday may have marked the first time many heard of Bobby Rush, but the hoodie-wearing, Trayvon-supporting congressman is known as a ‘local legend,’ writes Nicholas McCarvel.

Before Wednesday morning, Bobby Rush was best known as the one politician to ever have beaten Barack Obama in an election. The congressman from Chicago’s South Side made headlines for wearing a hoodie while speaking on the chamber floor in support of Trayvon Martin, and getting himself booted from the podium for not adhering to the dress code.

Rush is both a longtime Washington insider and a well-liked representative of Chicago’s South Side, an overwhelmingly Democratic district that boasts the country’s highest percentage of black voters (65 percent). Those two characteristics helped Rush rout the current president when he was challenged as an incumbent in the 2000 election, and also seemed to influence his Wednesday stunt that included a pair of oversized sunglasses.

“He was blinded by his ambition,” Rush said of Obama in the New York Times in 2007, when the then-senator had just launched his campaign for the White House. “Obama has never suffered from a lack of believing that he can accomplish whatever it is he decides to try. Obama believes in Obama. And frankly, that has its good side but it also has its negative side.”

The 65-year-old Rush himself bursts with confidence, boosted by 10 terms in Congress, winning nine of them with 80 percent of the vote. The drubbing of Obama in 2000 was his closest contest since winning office in 1992, still doubling his opponent, 61 percent to 30 percent.

But while Rush has ingrained himself as the “only man to ever beat Obama” in the minds of many Americans, he had been rather quiet on the issue of Trayvon Martin prior to Wednesday. His Twitter account—one place where the Trayvon case gained steam on the national stage—did not mention Trayvon until Wednesday, when Rush spoke on the floor of the House.

Yet Rush has championed civil rights for much of his career, last year penning a column honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. In honoring King, Rush scolded the country for not moving forward on the issue of minority rights. “If [King] were alive today, I believe he would demand that the nation take a hard look at the mass incarceration of young black and brown men and women that has eviscerated too many communities in our nation.”

Strong identification with the Trayvon case could also come from a tragedy in Rush’s own life. In the fall of 1999, his 29-year-old son Huey was shot and killed in Rush’s district in Chicago as the incumbent waged his campaign against Obama. The killer got 90 years in prison.

While beloved by many in his district, Rush is facing challenges by six others for his seat this fall. He has also been criticized for his ties to top communications companies, including AT&T and Verizon, that are among his largest donors. Last year the Color of Change group called out Rush for his coziness with the industry, a claim he shrugged off.

In the fall of 1999, his 29-year-old son Huey was shot and killed in Rush’s district in Chicago.

Before the Georgia native became an ordained Christian minister in the 1960s, he served in the U.S. Army and later helped found the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, a group Rush later said was “glorifying thuggery and drugs,” but didn’t regret his involvement.

Rush’s display on Wednesday was not out of the blue. In February, he cohosted an event with the Discovery Channel and the NAACP about unsolved hate crimes. He also used headline-grabbing language in the fall of 2011 when he likened the NCAA to the Mafia: [it] “would make the mob look like choirboys … I have this innate understanding of the NCAA, and I think it is one of the most vicious, most ruthless organizations that was created by mankind.” Rush was holding a roundtable to discuss recruiting, financial compensation for athletes, and scholarship terms.

After claiming that “racial profiling has to stop” while sporting his hoodie on the House floor, Rush took to the TV cameras outside the chamber, wearing hoodie, sunglasses, and all. “Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.”

Hoodies on the Hill: Congressional Staffers Rally for Trayvon Martin

March 23, 2012 By JOHN PARKINSON
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/hoodies-on-the-hill-congressional-staffers-rally-for-trayvon-martin/

A group of Capitol Hill staffers gathered today on the U.S. Capitol steps to rally in support of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old unarmed boy gunned down in Sanford, Fla.

About 250 to 300 aides rallied this afternoon in support of “Hoodies on the Hill.” Participants were encouraged to wear hooded sweatshirts in the 80 degree heat and to bring Skittles candy and iced tea, two items Martin was carrying when he was killed by a 28-year-old man as he walked back to his father’s girlfriend’s house.

“We have a mandate to ensure that young boys like Trayvon live their lives and that they’re successful and that they have the opportunity we have today,” said Brandon Andrews, a congressional staffer who said he was representing African American men on the Hill.

Senate Chaplain Barry Black, a retired commander in the Navy, led the group in prayer, invoking Martin Luther King, Jr. and telling the crowd of his own experiences with racial stereotyping.

“I don’t have my hoodie, but I do have my skittles,” Black said, dressed characteristically in a white shirt and bowtie. “This is a great tragedy and I guess one of the positive aspects of this is it has awakened in so many, across all racial lines and awareness, that we need to do more to ‘cause justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”

“The death of Trayvron diminishes us,” he continued. “We need healing in our land today. So if we would seek humility, if we would harness prayer power, if we would turn from evil, God has promised, ‘I will hear from Heaven, forgive your sins and heal your land.’ I think that that is the least we can do.”

The organizer of the rally, Ify Ike, said she posted ‘Hoodies on the Hill’ as her Gchat status Thursday and had strong encouragement from friends to make her vision happen.

“Basically we just worked together to get other groups to galvanize and to stand for life,” Ike, who works as a fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, said. “Regardless of what side of the aisle we stand on, we all are here today to say that we do respect life. Trayvon did matter. Trayvon was a good kid. Trayvon’s hoodie was not what made him suspicious. Trayvon’s skin should not have made him suspicious.”

One man sang Sam Cooke’s 1964 civil rights song “A Change is Gonna Come” before the crowd then joined together and sang “We Shall Overcome.”

Earlier today, President Obama made his first public comments on the shooting, calling for “some soul searching” and suggesting that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

“It took some courage for the president to talk on the issue, shows the national significance of it,” Jerron Smith, a congressional aide from Cleveland, Ohio, said at the rally. “It was just important that he made comments supporting the family and I think everybody should ask for justice and peace in this situation.”

UGA alumna, civil rights attorney to present lecture ‘I Am Trayvon Martin’

August 31, 2015 Alan Flurry

Lecture: “I Am Trayvon Martin”
Thursday, Sep 10 2015 5:00 pm
Chapel

Athens, Ga. - The University of Georgia Institute for African American Studies will present “I Am Trayvon Martin: Hoodies Up—How One Case Changed a Nation and Ignited the World.” The lecture by UGA alumna and civil rights advocate Jasmine Rand will be Sept. 10 at 5 p.m. in the UGA Chapel.

Founder of Rand Law LLC and an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Law, Rand is a practicing attorney and international legal analyst known for her representation of the Martin family. She is the attorney of record for the family of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

While “I Am Trayvon Martin” became a plea for social justice in the aftermath of the young man’s murder in Florida in 2012, Rand’s lecture will frame the battle cry in terms beyond race.

“Anyone can be a target to the dangers, tragedies and abuse of basic human rights that we experience all too often,” according to Rand’s speaker’s bio. “When it comes to the present-day civil rights struggles across the world, some choose to overlook, and some choose to act.”

A 2004 UGA graduate with degrees in African American studies and political science, Rand regularly appears in the media to share her expertise on litigation surrounding police brutality cases, though her interest in broader social reform has expanded beyond the courtroom.

“I don’t take a unilateral approach to talking about the problems of racial disparity,” Rand said. “I can win cases in court but that doesn’t change access to education, that doesn’t change access to opportunity.”

As her work has extended to international judicial reform projects around the world, Rand’s desire to continue her own education has found focus. She is scholar-in-residence at Harvard Law School in international human rights this fall, and she continues to develop curriculum and teach at the University of Miami School of Law.

“It’s a much more sociological approach to teaching law,” Rand said of her curriculum.

“If you break down every aspect of the Trayvon Martin case, things that are tangible and things that are intangible, you’re dealing with civil and human rights, and so much of that is not quantifiable in a traditional sense. So there are certain aspects that have a very real influence on leading a movement and creating social change and changing the law that have nothing to do with black letter law.”

Rand notes the media’s impact on educating the general public—to influence voter turnout and legislative changes—as well as the influence of popular music among these factors.

“There are many aspects of the law and the social justice movement that are not quantifiable and not tangible, but they are worth discussing in the educational context.”

Rand received her Juris Doctor from the Florida State University College of Law.

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