Rest in Power

by Sybrina Fulton

  I held up one of the cards with Trayvon’s picture on the front.

  “And what he said was, ‘That’s my son, too!’ So my message is coming across. And it’s coming across the right way. It’s coming across because I know that regardless of the color of someone’s skin, that somebody is listening. That somebody wants to act and somebody wants to react. The only thing I say to you is: Nobody is hurting worse than me as a parent. Me as a mom. Because you know, as a mom, we are a little sensitive when it comes to our children, and we have every right to be.

  “When they hurt, we hurt. When they’re happy, we’re happy.

  “At times I feel like I’m a broken vessel. At times, I don’t know if I’m going or coming. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is using me and God is using my family, to make a change, to make a difference.

  “So lastly, I just want to tell you about the foundation that we have created in Trayvon’s name. Because the verdict is not going to define who Trayvon Martin was.

  “We will define his legacy.

  “We will define who he is and what he was all about.

  “I can’t do it alone. I can’t do it with just my family. So not only am I asking the Urban League family, I’m asking your individual families to take a look at our website. To get involved and stand up for something, please. Because we need your help, your support, and, more importantly, your voice. So that there are no more Trayvon Martins again.”

  I thanked the National Urban League, the audience, our attorneys and supporters. And that audience of six thousand people rose up once again to applaud and embrace me, and that embrace continued all the way back from Philadelphia to Miami, where God continued embracing me by leading me into the next phase of my life.

  In a dream, I saw myself in an endless field of purple.

  And I saw ladies crying in agony and sorrow. They were lost and alone, even while they were somehow together. Then, suddenly, I saw them smiling and hugging one another in support. I somehow knew that these ladies were mothers. And I knew that, just like me, they were mothers who had lost their children to senseless gun violence. And while they once felt alone, they now had one another.

  I saw these mothers sitting together in a circle in an enormous room. Then I saw them sitting together before tables filled with flowers, and everything was so pretty and so purple. There were different speakers coming up to speak to them. I had no clue what all of this meant. But I knew that it was a vision that God had given to me. When I awoke, I grabbed a pen and paper, and I began writing down what I had seen in my dream. And when I was done writing about that purple dream in my purple bedroom, I had pages and pages of notes, all about that dream about mothers who found healing in one another.

  The next morning, I knew my purpose, my mission. I knew the way that I was going to channel the not-guilty verdict into something positive. I had to do something to help other mothers, women who, like me, had lost their children to violence. Mothers who, in shockingly increasing numbers, would soon form a sorority of sorts. I would find a way to unite this sorority, once joined only by sorrow, in support. I would find a way to help the mothers work toward a common goal: to show that our grief doesn’t define us; it propels us to do something to bring change. So that one day what happened to Trayvon, and has happened to other sons and daughters across America and the world, might someday soon never happen to another mother’s child.

  We would come together as a circle, because a circle is a symbol of unity and struggle—a circle never ends. I knew that the key to my healing was to help other mothers.

  The event we launched would be called the Circle of Mothers. The participants were fifty mothers whose names you would never have known except for the children they lost—fifty mothers whose children had been cut down, fifty mothers now on a mission in the hope of ensuring that the violence doesn’t touch other mothers, other fathers, other families.

  The day after my dream I met with the Trayvon Martin Foundation team, and we began calling the mothers. They weren’t hard to find. Their names had been in headlines from coast to coast. Others I met through people I knew, through pastors who, upon hearing about our losing Trayvon, told us, “The same thing happened to one of the members of our church.”

  Soon I had a long list of mothers to invite to our event. They included a Colorado state representative, whose only son was shot and killed while sitting in his car at a traffic light in Aurora, Colorado, in 2005; Cleopatra Pendleton, whose fifteen-year-old honor student daughter, Hadiya, a drum majorette who had performed during President Obama’s second inauguration, was shot and killed while standing in a Chicago park after a gang mistook her and her friends for rivals; and the keynote speaker, the activist Afeni Shakur, whose son, the rapper Tupac Shakur, was shot dead in Las Vegas.

  Sadly, there were so many others. But happily, almost everyone we contacted immediately said that they would attend.

  We couldn’t just have a room filled with mothers; we also needed a support team, people to help uplift these women. For that, I called on Lisa Nichols, a dynamic entrepreneur, life coach, and public speaker who has delivered her passionate message of empowerment to thirty million people around the world. I met Lisa in Philadelphia when I delivered that Urban League speech. After I spoke that day, Lisa came up onstage with me, holding my hand and telling the audience to “Give the world notice!”

  “Give the world notice, and the Lord will draw something up in you that you didn’t even know you had!” she said, and I felt like she could have been speaking about me.

  If Lisa Nichols could inspire thirty million people worldwide, just think what she could do for fifty mothers who had lost children to senseless gun violence.

  “Whatever you want me to do, I’m here,” she immediately said when I called her.

  “I want to help other mothers,” I told her. “I want to do something to build up the other mothers. I had a great group of family and friends around me, people who love me and prayed for me and supported me, but I don’t know if the other mothers had or have that.”

  Lisa Nichols arrived in Miami that next May 2014 when those fifty mothers gathered for the first of what would become an annual Circle of Mothers weekend.

  Although I pray that not one more mother is added to our group, the weekends have been the most inspiring events of my life. We share our stories and our grief. We cry, we remember, and we support one another. We honor our children’s lives by not just dwelling on their deaths. At that first event, we were inspired by the words of our keynote speaker, the now-late Afeni Shakur, and were led by Lisa Nichols, who would later say that she “guided the healing” by celebrating the mothers’ lives “versus only focusing on their loss.”

  After it was over, we bonded as both mothers and sisters, emerging closer and stronger, and determined to bring about change.

  Soon after that, Tracy led a similar event for fathers, called the Circle of Fathers.

  Today, the Trayvon Martin Foundation lives on in my son’s name, through various scholarship programs and mentoring initiatives, ranging from teaching kids Trayvon’s age what to do and how to act if confronted by the police or other figures of authority, to holding our annual Circle of Mothers and Circle of Fathers weekends, which we have held now for three years strong.

  And from these beginnings radiated a chance for real change.

  Tracy and I, along with our attorneys, began fighting Stand Your Ground laws throughout our nation, addressing Congress on the issues of Stand Your Ground and racial profiling in our judicial system, and testifying before the United Nations about racial discrimination when the U.N. reviewed the killing of our son and the not-guilty verdict. President Obama would invite Tracy and me to the White House just before he announced his My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a mentorship program for black and brown boys, and we could feel the power of that historic house and the winds of change building around us. Celebrities and athletes used their power and influence to continue advocating for our so
n even after the not-guilty verdict. Ebony magazine dedicated its September 2013 issue to Trayvon, with four different covers, three featuring a famous personality with their sons—the director Spike Lee, the basketball star Dwyane Wade, and the actor Boris Kodjoe—and a fourth cover with Tracy, Jahvaris, and me, and each cover had the headline “We Are Trayvon: Join the Movement to Change America.” Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx hosted a fundraiser at his house for the Trayvon Martin Foundation, and he continued supporting us and our cause, calling upon his influential friends to join him in deploying their power to create positive change in our nation and greater equality for our children.

  We have a long way to go. But it’s a start.

  —

  Even as the killings continue and the number of parents who have lost children continues to rise, we, as mothers and fathers, continue to support one another as members of a community that share a parent’s worst nightmare: the inconceivable tragedy of losing a child.

  All I wanted was to be a mother, to work at my job and raise my kids and live a normal life. Then my son was killed and that world went with him, and God led me to another place, another world, and another life. I became a mother on a mission. A mission to bring awareness and change. So that the killing of Trayvon Martin would stand for something, so that the killing will someday stop and the healing will begin. So that our children, and all children, can live in peace.

  Rest in power, my son.

  To the memory and legacy of our fallen son, Trayvon Martin

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We would like to thank all those who have been so supportive of our fight for justice over the past years, and those who continue to stand with us in our quest for change.

  About the Authors

  SYBRINA FULTON and TRACY MARTIN are the founders of the Trayvon Martin Foundation, which aims to create community programming and raise awareness of gun violence and racial profiling on families. Fulton and Martin live in the Miami, Florida, area.

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