Thursday, March 15, 2012

Justice for Trayvon Martin




I had another post that I was working on, but I decided instead to write this one.

Do you know who Trayvon Martin is? He is a 17 year old black boy who was shot and killed by the head of a neighborhood watch. Trayvon was unarmed, and walking back to a relative's house after buying a package of skittles and an Arizona iced tea. I first heard about this story on this blog. Over the past week or so, I have seen it mentioned on several other blogs written by black people, but when I mentioned it to a group of white friends this evening, none of them had heard about it. That is what spurred me to write this post. If you would like to read more details about what happened, you can click here.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

I don't understand how the self defense claim could be seen as so plausible as to not even result in an arrest, when the person who was supposedly defending himself had a gun, and the person who was supposedly being defended against had no weapon? Also the one with the gun outweighed the one without a gun by about 100lbs.

Why didn't George Zimmerman listen to the 911 operator when he/she told him not to follow Trayvon?

Why haven't the police released the 911 tapes? This happened several weeks ago, and I know for a fact that Inside Edition can get 911 tapes like, three days after the recording is made.

Stories like this make me worry for my son. He is not even 2, but I think about when he is 15 or 16, and one of my fears is that he is going to be out and about
and get shot by the police because they think he is acting "suspicious." I know George Zimmerman was not a cop, but he was someone who felt that he had some authority and also had a gun. I have thought about how if we get our son a car, we should get a bunch of those stickers that the police sell you that you put in your back window so when you get pulled over, you don't get tickets. I wonder if they would also be effective in keeping the cops from harrassing a young boy of color. I think about how we have to teach him to seem as calm and non threatening as possible (which I think might be hard, because he will probably be super tall like his dad.)

I am so tired of hearing stories about young black boys dying. I hope that when my son is older, things will have improved significantly. I hope that Trayvon's friends and family can find the answers that they deserve, and that George Zimmerman is held accountable for his actions on that night.

If you would like to sign a petition calling for George Zimmerman to be prosecuted, you can click here. And if you have any thoughts or feelings that you'd like to share, feel free to leave a comment.

14 comments:

  1. Awful. Just awful. :(

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  2. Anonymous6:47 AM

    It's so terrible.

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  3. i read about it in the huffington post.

    the self defense - as far as i can tell - is being based on the idea that a neighbor saw the younger man on top of zimmerman hitting him and zimmerman sustained head injuries.

    understand that i provide that information as information and not something that i agree with. at a minimum zimmerman should be in custody pending trial.

    i do believe that zimmerman probably was getting his ass beat. as they say - don't start nothing and there won't be nothing. you go stalking me in the dark and there is a better than even chance you will find yourself getting hit.

    the fact is that zimmerman wasn't a cop. and that is an important fact not because of how it absolves the police (that's a whole 'nother issue) but because we can safely assume trayvon would have reacted entirely differently to a police officer.

    the whole thing makes me sad beyond measure.

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  4. Sabria9:25 AM

    Sad. And he looks like he would've been SO very threatening carrying Skittles and a can! Sad! America is sad.

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  5. Anonymous4:35 PM

    This whole story makes me sick. Thanks for making us aware of it.
    JD

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  6. NSangoma8:29 PM

    ~
    ...
    Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Martin’s parents, said the teenager had not been using drugs or alcohol and would have had no reason to confront Zimmerman. Martin had been watching the National Basketball Association
    All-Star game at his father’s girlfriend’s house in the neighborhood when he ventured out to a nearby 7-Eleven store for a snack, Crump said. A bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea were on his body when police
    arrived on the scene.
    ...
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/shooting-of-florida-youth-prompts-calls-for-federal-investigation/2012/03/19/gIQA1HZ6NS_story.html

    P - U - whuh??, whuh??, whuh??; PSSUY.

    Negroe PSSUY??
    White PSSUY??
    Latino PSSUY??
    Asian PSSUY??
    Enquiring minds want to know.

    Now, that must be some fantabulous pssuy for a Negroe not to notice until the next fcuking day that his son had not returned from the convenience store; but then again, he is a fcuking pitiful baby-daddy-ssa-Negroe.

    As I stated earlier, baby-mama is visibly pssied at this poor excuse for a baby-daddy ssa MoFo'n NGGIER:

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hP7p0-FqhxQ/T2U8sjk3FxI/AAAAAAAAKW8/TVtRtTMQBv0/s1600/images.jpg
    `

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  7. NSangoma11:22 AM

    ~
    Son, I know that I'm supposed to spend this weekend with you; but you don't mind, do you, if I run by here real quick, so I can check on this BISH?

    You know how it is; heh, heh, heh.

    It won't cost you no kind of nothing for me to do so; but you life.
    `

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  8. NSangoma3:06 PM

    ~
    Blackmotheritis
    (we need more BLACKFATHERitis)

    Trayvon Martin was 17, visiting his father in Sanford, Florida. He was also black.

    ...
    http://www.tnr.com/article/101840/trayvon-martin-race-injustice

    Trayvon Martin may have been in Sanford FL to visit his father, true. But, the problem arises from whom his father was visiting:
    ...
    Martin had been watching the National Basketball Association
    All-Star game at his father’s girlfriend’s house in the neighborhood
    when he ventured out to a nearby 7-Eleven store for a snack,

    ...
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/shooting-of-florida-youth-prompts-calls-for-federal-investigation/2012/03/19/gIQA1HZ6NS_story.html

    Blackmotheritis
    http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1997-08-24/news/9708220686_1_joseph-puberty-temples

    et tu Jonathan
    ...
    There was also being mindful that you are being watched in stores.
    Watched turned to followed as I got older. To this day, if a sales
    person is overly attentive to what I might be looking for I leave the
    store. Never to return. And then there was keeping a distance of
    deniability from white women when walking on the street. Lest you be
    accused of any number of offenses, from trying to snatch her purse to
    sexual assault.

    ...
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/under-suspicion-the-killing-of-trayvon-martin/2011/03/04/gIQAz4F4KS_blog.html

    Blackfatheritis
    www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/opinion/blow-the-curious-case-of-trayvon-martin.html

    No Problem with anything that they've written, my siblings and I got a similar talk when we were youngsters. I gave the same talk to both my daughter and my son when they were younger.
    As an adult of some maturity, I often find myself followed in stores. At my son's so-called exclusive prep school, the guards, the Black ones, have on several occasions asked him what he's doing there. But, I digress.

    Trayvon Martin's parents must not have given him the talk; do they even know what Blackmotheritis and Blackfatheritis are?

    Trayvon, is dead because his father wanted some pssuy:
    ...
    That was Feb. 27, one day after Trayvon was shot. The father thought
    that he was missing
    , according to the family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump,

    ...
    ibid

    Trayvon, is dead because of NGGIERitis.

    Yes, baby-sis; your son is dead because your baby-daddy was thinking with his wrong head:

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hP7p0-FqhxQ/T2U8sjk3FxI/AAAAAAAAKW8/TVtRtTMQBv0/s1600/images.jpg
    `

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  9. This incident makes me angry. I heard about it on NPR first & just read the brief account on Reuters site. Zimmerman is stupid and needs to be arrested. Self-defense, my ass. What a tragedy. I hope that some good - or at least awareness - can come from this. I'm sorry that you fear for your son, but methinks that instilling a sense of distrust of authority (police) in him could possibly backfire. Anyway, I'm sure a lot of [white] people feel that the Trayvon Martin thing isn't about race, but, uh, I'm pretty sure it is. Ugh.

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  10. ~
    Lawyer: Zimmerman not a racist
    ...
    Sonner said Zimmerman and his wife served as mentors to two teenage
    children of an African-American woman. Though funding was cut for the
    program, the couple continued their efforts on their own, taking the
    13-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy on outings to a mall, a science
    center and a basketball game. They also helped in a fund-raiser for an
    African-American church, the lawyer said.

    ...
    http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/23/justice/florida-teen-shooting/?hpt=hp_t1

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMn87ejxAsU

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poElPQdAIb0
    `

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  11. NSangoma10:36 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  12. NSangoma11:09 AM

    ~
    Poseur, or show 'nuff gansta-playa?

    http://suxorz.com/i5/1332569412.jpg

    `

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  13. This whole story makes me sick. Thanks for taking the time to post this.

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  14. Kevin9:09 AM

    NSangoma is a racist bigot who wouldn't dare say any of this shti in the presence of a black person. What a lonely life to patrol message boards leaving hateful speech. Karma is a bitch, your family WILL pay. but you probably don't have a family, just a laptop you purchased from walmart.

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