Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, said on Saturday that “Trayvon’s law” should be enacted across the United States in a speech at the “Realize the Dream March and Rally” in Washington.
“Let us say, ‘Yes we will pass Trayvon’s law from coast to coast,'” Jealous said at the event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
The NAACP recently released principles for what it would like to see in so-called Trayvon’s Laws at the state and local levels:
Ending racial profiling;
Repealing stand your ground type laws;
Creating law enforcement accountability through effective police oversight;
Improving training and best practices for community watch groups; and
Mandating law enforcement data collection on homicide cases involving people of color.
“When they say, ‘no you can’t,’ we say, ‘yes we can,'” Jealous said, saying that marchers could also succeed in passing the DREAM Act, enacting marriage equality, abolishing the death penalty and expanding the Voting Rights Act. “Let us say, ‘Yes we will protect the right to vote…”