“I say to the young people here, you’re ending a protest because
you started a movement,” said Bond, a co-founder of the former Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “That movement is going to reverberate
across the state of Florida and eventually to the adjoining states, until all
of America knows something about the strength and the power that was
demonstrated here.”
Following the press conference with Bond, the Dream
Defenders marched to the Florida Governor’s Mansion to serve Gov. Rick Scott
with an eviction notice. They plan to register 65,000 new voters, which represents
the margin of victory that Scott carried in 2010. Scott is running for
reelection in 2014.
According to the Miami Herald: “The Dream Defenders claimed several
victories, including a promise from [House Speaker Will Weatherford] to hold a
hearing on the Stand Your Ground law this fall. The group also secured meetings
with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to discuss racial profiling,
Agnew said, and began a dialogue with the state Department of Juvenile Justice
on the disproportionate number of young African-American men in prison.”
The Dream Defenders, whose leaders include former FAMU student body presidents Phillip Agnew and Monique Gillum, accepted the torch from a number of
civil rights leaders who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Harry Belafonte
and Jesse Jackson, Sr. both came to the capitol to express their personal
support for the sit-in. Bond, another one of the brave individuals who stood
with King during the 1960s, said the Dream Defenders have picked up where the activists
of his era left off.
“It’s fitting that the 50th anniversary of the March on
Washington is occurring in a few days. That movement made this movement
possible. And your movement gave our movement its legacy,” Bond said.