Sybrina Fulton on Trusting Her Gut, Running for Office, and Finding Herself
Most people assume they know why Sybrina Fulton decided to run for office. I ask her anyway, expecting her to say that the 2012 murder of her 17-year-old son, Trayvon Martin, was the impetus. But when posed with the question, Fulton surprises me.
“Okay, so this is a crazy story,” she says. “There was a rumor that was out that I was running for office when I really wasn’t. That's how it started.”
Fulton—a Florida native who is running for Miami–Dade County commissioner in District 1—became a public figure when Martin was murdered. After his death she retired from a two-decade career working in five different departments of local government and launched the Trayvon Martin Foundation; she has spent much of the last decade traveling nationally to talk about gun violence and youth empowerment.
But when she heard that rumor about her political aspirations, Fulton had to admit—to herself at least—that she was interested. She began researching which seats in her area would soon become available and how she might be best positioned to serve her community. But she didn't talk about the possibility publicly until she attended an event in April 2019 and was asked what it means to be an activist. “You have to act,” she recalls telling the audience. “You have to write letters, sign petitions, call the politicians, sometimes you have to rally and protest, and sometimes you have to run for office.”
Voicing it out loud made it feel real—maybe this was her time to run. “I had this gut feeling,” she says. “I thought, ‘Lord are you talking to me? Or am I hungry?’”
Fulton announced she had formally qualified to run against Miami Gardens mayor Oliver Gilbert for the position of Miami–Dade County commissioner in June 2020. In Florida, county commissioners help oversee county budgets, zoning, development, maintenance, ballot measures, and health and welfare services. Fulton’s campaign pledges are accordingly pragmatic and community oriented. She plans to improve Miami-Dade public transportation, support small and minority businesses, and increase access to affordable housing.
Still, she says that running a campaign has been a steep learning curve—dealing with time constraints, trusting other staffers to take on important work, and coming to terms with people who doubt her.
“I had a hard time at first getting out of the bubble of being just Trayvon Martin’s mom,” she says. “They think I just fell off a truck, fell out of the sky, and, bam, that’s who I am. They don’t understand. I have another son, I have a bachelor’s degree, and I worked 24 years in Miami–Dade County. I want people to have somebody to believe in.”
Fulton wants to put locals’ faith back in to their elected officials, which means she’s extremely careful about how she presents herself and what she commits to. When the killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, “I was very deliberate about what events I went to,” she says. “I didn’t want to participate in anything that was bringing any additional bad reputation to Miami.”
Campaigning through COVID-19 has been difficult too. Once the pandemic hit, Fulton stopped in-person canvassing and group events in favor of Zoom rallies and car caravans. When she ventures outside, she wears a custom face mask that reads, “Vote Sybrina Fulton.”
After all that time spent contemplating this first foray into electoral politics, Fulton is now in the home stretch of her campaign: Election Day is August 18. Miami-Dade has early voting between August 3 and 16, so she’s been getting out daily to speak to voters (from a distance) in the heat and humidity of the Florida summer.
Ultimately, Fulton says, she’s running because this place has always been her place. She was born in Miami, and she never plans to leave. Her roots are here. And this is where she thinks she can do the most good.
“I have been the voice for my son, Trayvon Martin, for the last eight years. Now I’m called to be the voice for the community,” she says. “I want to speak out against different things that are going on. I want to put a good name behind being a politician.”
Originally Appeared on Glamour
