SANFORD — The rise and fall of the crowd’s cheers almost drowned out the speech as Marie Dino and Chrisley Carpio watched the stage from a crowded grass lawn.
The Rev. Al Sharpton told those gathered in Sanford that protesting didn’t make them extremists, it made them heroes.
“We are not the troublemakers,” he said. “We are the trouble-breakers.”
Carpio and Dino, both 20-year-old UF students, shouted in agreement.
About 30 UF students joined more than 3,000 demonstrators in Sanford on Saturday to demand the arrest of George Zimmerman, 28, and the permanent removal of Sanford Sheriff Bill Lee.
These calls come more than a month after Sanford police said Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Police said Trayvon was walking home, unarmed, on Feb. 26, when Zimmerman called police and told them he was following a suspicious-looking person.
The two fought, and Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon. Zimmerman told police he acted in self-defense.
Zimmerman hasn’t been arrested, partly because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which gives citizens the right to use deadly force in self-defense if they are attacked in a place they have a right to be.
Florida is one of 24 states with similar self-defense laws — statutes that have been called into question in the aftermath Trayvon’s death.
Since then, protests have erupted in cities across the state. Gainesville has had at least two in the past week.
When the protests started in the town where Trayvon was shot, UF Students for a Democratic Society members decided they had to be a part of it.
Dino’s mint-green VW bug cruised through the UF campus at 8 a.m. Saturday. She and Carpio picked up Eric Brown, 18, and Alexa Kristensen, 19, from Turlington Plaza to fill up the car for the trip to Sanford.
Dino and Carpio said they learned how to keep protests peaceful and how to reach out to the media from older members of SDS. The student activist organization protests issues ranging from immigration to tuition.
“People think activists just yell to yell, but it’s not true. What we do is very structured,” said Dino, a member of SDS and an education sophomore.
She said people don’t see their work off the streets, which includes negotiations, planning and writing news releases and proposals.
“We don’t expect results overnight,” said Carpio, a history sophomore and organizer for SDS. “You need a lot of patience.”
Dino and Carpio are no strangers to the protest scene.
They said SDS has held rallies against block tuition and University Police after police shot an international graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong, on March 2, 2010.
The size of those protests paled in comparison to the one at Sanford.
Walking up to the demonstration, what looked like a gray mass slowly became thousands of protesters waving the now-iconic black-and-white image of a hooded Trayvon.
Those gathered ranged in age — some came in strollers, while others pushed walkers. Some brought entire families.
Civil rights leaders including Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, surrounded by marshals at the front of the crowd, led a march to the Sanford Police Department.
Slowly, the congested crowd began to shuffle toward the protest route. Chants ebbed and flowed when leaders of call-and-follow cheers exhausted their voices.
Along the protest path, shops with run-down brick walls were closed.
The streets were littered with onlookers and people selling food. Some pushed shopping carts full of T-shirts reading “Justice for Trayvon” and sold them for $10 each.
One man, 56-year-old Frank Moore, drove from Columbia, S.C., to Sanford to sell his shirts at the rally.
The crowd grew more enthusiastic as the Sanford Police Department came into view.
Sharpton and Jackson spoke in front of the department, along with various pastors and representatives from the NAACP.
Between speakers, UF students yelled, “The people united will never be divided.”
An older woman stopped the group and told them they were saying the words wrong.
“It’s the people united will never be defeated,” she said. “Because when we’re together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”
Some with the UF group wore hoodies, which have become symbols of the movement.
But by the end of the protests, Carpio regretted her wardrobe choice.
“Maybe the thick hoodie was a bad idea,” she said, smiling and wiping sweat from her brow.
Contact Shelby Webb at swebb@alligator.org.
The Rev. Al Sharpton speaks to demonstrators at the Sanford Police Department on Saturday afternoon. Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson led the march to the police department Saturday morning.
Rendell Manley, 47, and R’nell Manley, 1, of Sanford, watch the demonstration at the Sanford Police Department on Saturday afternoon.
Protesters sit on the steps of the Sanford Police Department on Saturday afternoon. Demonstrators marched to the station Saturday morning to voice discontent with the inaction of police in the Trayvon Martin case.
