Rights activists welcome Zimmerman charges

Published: April 13, 2012 3:14 PM
By SID CASSESE  sid.cassese@newsday.com
A group of Nassau County civil rights activists on Friday welcomed the filing of murder charges against the alleged killer of Trayvon Martin in Florida, while lamenting what they called a rise in hate crimes on Long Island and nationwide.
“We’re pleased Mr. [George] Zimmerman has been arrested, and we expect the legal system will do its job,” said Garden City civil rights attorney James Vagnini. “But there has been a rise in racially motivated incidents in this country.”
Vagnini, along with NAACP officials and a former regional director of the state division of Human Rights, held a news conference at the Coral House in Baldwin two days after Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17, on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla.
Prosecutors say Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, followed and confronted the black teenager after police dispatchers told him to back off. Zimmerman says Martin attacked him after he had turned away and was returning to his vehicle.
Leah Jefferson, of Patchogue, the former state official who now works in women’s health care, said she had seen a rise in complaints of job and housing discrimination on Long Island shortly before she left job five years ago. “It doesn’t seem that anything has changed,” she said, referring to the Martin shooting.
Freeport–Roosevelt NAACP President Douglas Mayers said swastikas and nooses symbolizing the lynching of black men are still being found around Long Island. “There were recently reports of a swastika in , and I’m hearing about nooses all over the place,” he said.
Last summer in West Hempstead, a building door frame on Westminster Road was marked with profanity and a swastika symbol.
He said blacks still seem to bear the brunt of such discriminatory action.
Vagnini said the death of Martin, who was unarmed, will be remembered for “sparking a new discussion on race in America.”