The Florida neighborhood watchman, who shot 17 year-old Trayvon Martin last year, was released yesterday by Judge Deborah Nelson on the basis of the controversial ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. The outcome provoked a racial profiling of the case with many influential African-American musicians holding respectful silences at concerts and even boycotts of the city in question.
Beyonce halted her Nashville leg of the Mrs. Carter Show World Tour to honour the victim, dimming the stage lights before proceeding to sing her fitting hit ‘Halo’. Rapper Young Jeezy released ‘It’s a Cold World’ specifically in Martin’s memory, a requiem that was taken up by the crowd of protestors in the aptly named Union Square. There has been a flurry of tweets from the likes of Tom Morello, Katy Perry, Rihanna, P Diddy, Chuck D and Nicki Minaj, slighting what Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest describes as a ‘miscarriage of justice’.
Most interesting of all, Soul legend Stevie Wonder yesterday announced at his gig in Quebec City that “until the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law is abolished in Florida, I will never perform there again… as a matter of fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state or in that part of the world.”
These offerings are admirable no doubt, some say that figures with influence have a duty to provoke responses from their podiums, but in this instance, a trial that has roots within the 2nd amendment, a popular controversy that wasn’t even revoked during the horrific 2012 ‘Aurora Shooting’, it seems implausible that the state would respond to the threatening of a musician’s relinquishment of performance.
Having said that, it is not unheard of for stars to inspire change; John Lennon’s ethos (“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal”) helped to alter the way society viewed conflict, however to imagine that a singular artist’s boycott will rouse politicians definitively, is somewhat naïve. Hopefully we will see the unification of popular figures over the coming weeks. It is after all a very noble cause.
