MIAMI — The Circle of Brotherhood, Dream Defenders and several other local grassroots organizations want Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to fund their initiatives aimed at reducing gun violence.
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin went out to a 7-Eleven to pick up snacks and never returned home. The Black teenager was tragically shot and killed in his Sanford, Florida, neighborhood by a white man named George Zimmerman. In response, young people from all over the state came together to form the Dream Defenders, an organization dedicated to fighting racial and economic injustice. They marched to the Sanford police department to demand Zimmermanâs arrest, and a year later, they took over the state capitol in Tallahassee, occupying it for a month.
This April marks Dream Defendersâ nine-year anniversary â and the passage of a new law that threatens the groupâs very reason for existing.
Home/Florida Good/The Dream Defenders Offered A Mic To The Community Through Its Newest Installation, The Listening Project
The Dream Defenders Offered A Mic To The Community Through Its Newest Installation, The Listening Project
By Valerie Izquierdo
April 20, 2021
A listening booth was stationed at the Civic Media Center Library location in downtown Gainesville. “It is a heavily gentrified area,” Karine Dieuvil said, adding that that’s one of several reasons for the downtown area having many homeless people. The CMC is also where most of the Dream Defenders’ operations are planned and executed. (Valerie Izquierdo/WUFT News)
A new installation across Gainesville gave people this month a chance to step in a room and unravel their stories of hardships and concerns within their neighborhoods.
one of the things that we were talking about earlier is that this is a movement. this is a movement of today. we ve been organizing before this. there have been people doing this work for a long time. so when we came together so quickly, it s because we ve been ready for this. we ve been working with those that have come before us. as well as we communicate with one another. we have our people in florida, dream defender who is we work closely with. those in ferguson who have just begun doing this work and supporting one another as young people. and so we are united. we have a unified message. this impacts our country. this impacts our generation. and so it s really powerful for us, for people to see the hands up, don t shoot. because those are the last words
we lost disconnect. most of our leaders went off to become higher officials in foft and leaders of businesses and the community was left fallo. we now have come back to a place where we have effectively brought new people to the fore. they re all over the country like the young people, dream defender. they can step into the space now. our task is to get there. when i think of what the communities did in the falloness, that s my generation. i m born in 1973 and that s the same year that hip-hop is born so our voice, our counter hegemonic voice that was