Dream Defenders serve Scott with an eviction notice, move to voter registration

On Thursday, legendary civil rights leader Julian Bond stood with the Dream Defenders as they announced their decision to end their sit-in and move on to the next phase of their justice campaign.

“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.

The Dream Defenders spent 31 days in Scott’s office to protest the Stand Your Ground law that helped lead to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the killer of unarmed Florida teenager. They demanded a special legislative session to repeal the statute. But all three options for calling such a session failed. Scott, the leaders of the state House and Senate, and a majority of lawmakers in the legislature said no.

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.