The irony has constantly troubled Raafi Rivero. “People really like Black athletes,” he reported. “But they never enjoy Black individuals.”
In July 2013, it resonated anew for Rivero, a lifelong sports enthusiast, when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Black teenager Trayvon Martin, the exact weekend Rivero saw the movie “Fruitvale Station,” about the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant, who was also Black.
“I cried numerous periods that weekend, and I actually felt powerless,” Rivero said from Santa Fe last thirty day period for the duration of a videoconference job interview. “I was asking myself, What can I do?”
Rivero, a filmmaker with a track record in structure, poured his emotion into a piece of art that sooner or later turned section of a sequence that has impacted observers across the state. Rivero made use of Adobe Illustrator to style and design an graphic of a black and yellow basketball jersey with “Unarmed” on the front and “Martin 17” on the back. Trayvon Martin was 17 and unarmed when he was shot, and in studying about his dying, Rivero stored seeing a photograph of Martin in a black and yellow football jersey.
