“Trayvon Martin Could’ve Been Me”: A Difficult Journey To Becoming A More Perfect Union, Not A Perfect Union, A More Perfect Union
Last weekend, not long after the jury delivered its verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, President Obama issued a written statement, urging all Americans to “respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.” Today, however, the president made an unexpected appearance at the White House press briefing room to speak to the issue in more detail.
For those who can’t watch the video, this was a rather remarkable moment for the nation’s first African-American president, who reflected on the story and race in America with an eloquence that has sometimes been lacking of late.
President Barack Obama emerged Friday to give voice to African Americans’ reaction to last weekend’s verdict in the George Zimmerman case, saying that Trayvon Martin “could have been me 35 years ago.”
He also suggested that the outcome of the case could have been different if Martin were white. “If a white male teen would have been involved in this scenario,” he said, “both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.”
Obama went on to reflect on his own experiences as a black man, drawing scrutiny in department stores, hearing car-door clicks as he walked down sidewalks, and seeing women clutch their purses nervously with him in an elevator. “The African-American community is looking at this through a set of experiences and history that doesn’t go away,” he said.
Obama also broached the subject of “racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws” — including the death penalty and drug laws — which generally is left out of our public conversation.
But perhaps most provocatively, the president reflected on an imaginary scenario. “If Trayvon Martin was of age and was armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” Obama asked. “If the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we should examine those laws.”
It was a rather remarkable display. A transcript of the remarks is below.
The president said the following:
I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session. The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there’s going to obviously be a whole range of issues — immigration, economics, et cetera — we’ll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions.
The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week — the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday. But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.
First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.
The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there’s going to be a lot of arguments about the legal issues in the case — I’ll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues. The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury has spoken, that’s how our system works. But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling.
You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.
There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws — everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
Now, this isn’t to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they’re disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact — although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context. They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.
And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.
I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else. So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys. But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
Now, the question for me at least, and I think for a lot of folks, is where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction? I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent. If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family. But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do.
I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code. And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.
That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation we can’t do some things that I think would be productive. So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff, so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.
Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.
When I was in Illinois, I passed racial profiling legislation, and it actually did just two simple things. One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped. But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.
And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and, in turn, be more helpful in applying the law. And obviously, law enforcement has got a very tough job.
So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought to bear if state and local governments are receptive. And I think a lot of them would be. And let’s figure out are there ways for us to push out that kind of training.
Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.
I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the “stand your ground” laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case. On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?
And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.
Number three — and this is a long-term project — we need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African American boys. And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?
I’m not naïve about the prospects of some grand, new federal program. I’m not sure that that’s what we’re talking about here. But I do recognize that as President, I’ve got some convening power, and there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front. And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed — I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation. And we’re going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.
And then, finally, I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching. There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have. On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there’s the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can? Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.
And let me just leave you with a final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they’re better than we are — they’re better than we were — on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.
And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues. And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 19, 2013
“Unnecessarily Handicapped”: The Zimmerman Trial Shows It’s Time To Reconsider The Six-Member Jury
Small juries, like all small samples, carry big costs. Doesn’t a jury in a serious criminal case have 12 members? Not in Florida.
Florida is one of only two states where a jury as small as six can decide a serious felony case. It is the only state where a murder case goes to a six-member jury. And second-degree murder in Florida is serious indeed, carrying a sentence of 25 years to life. The circumstances of the shooting that killed an unarmed teenager, moreover, are sharply disputed, implicating the use of guns, the limits of self-defense and race relations. As we often do, we have given the jury in this case a challenging task.
Why should we care if the jury has six or 12 members? The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to trial by jury, but it does not specify jury size. When the Sixth Amendment was written, was the number simply assumed? James Madison thought it was: He thought the number was 12.
For almost 200 years, the U.S. Supreme Court consistently accepted this view, defining “jury” to mean the 12-member jury. For instance, in 1930, the court said that “it is not open to question” whether juries may consist of fewer than 12.
In 1970, however, the court reversed its position in Williams v. Florida and found no constitutional objection to Florida’s six-member jury. The court labeled the general use of 12 throughout history as an “historical accident.” The court’s characterization of the historical record has been widely disputed, but even more egregiously, the court joined its new historical assessment with a strikingly inaccurate behavioral claim.
It proclaimed that the behavior of six- and 12-member juries were “functionally” equivalent, and therefore the six-member jury was unobjectionable. In fact, the overwhelming weight of empirical evidence shows that juries of six do not perform as well as juries of 12.
How do six- and 12-member juries differ? Two differences are particularly relevant in the trial of George Zimmerman. First, numerous studies of all kinds show that cutting jury size in half decreases the likelihood that the jury will reflect a representative sample of the community. The lone non-white juror on the George Zimmerman jury is just one instance of that effect. The all-female jury is another.
The gender make-up of the jury cannot be explained merely by the majority female jury pool or attorney use of challenges. A total of 10 jurors was selected, the jury of six and four alternates. Two of the alternates were male. A larger jury that included the additional four would not have been homogeneous on gender.
Ethnicity and gender are not the only dimensions of difference shortchanged by a smaller jury.
Any background or set of beliefs or life experiences that may affect reactions to the evidence is substantially less likely to be represented on a six-member jury than on a 12-member jury. Simply due to chance, unrepresentativeness is more likely when only six jurors are needed to constitute the jury. That loss is particularly troubling when the jurors are evaluating crucial and disputed evidence, like the identity of the voice in the background on the 911 tape in the Zimmerman case.
Second, jury research finds that larger juries spend more time deliberating and their discussions of testimony are more thorough than smaller juries. More vigorous debate reflects the expanded pool of abilities and perspectives provided by the larger jury. Similarly, the ability of dissenters to resist majority pressure is promoted by the increased likelihood that a dissenter whose position is not simply idiosyncratic will have one or more other jurors who share that view. The dissenters might not carry the day, but their views will be more seriously considered.
There is no evidence that jury size is associated with more pro-prosecution or more pro-defense verdicts. Thus, the key here is not that the six-member jury systematically advantages one side or the other. Rather, the point is that a serious charge demands serious procedural consideration.
Even Florida, like every other state with the death penalty, uses a 12-member jury for capital offenses. Second-degree murder does not carry the death penalty in Florida, but it does call for thorough deliberation from a variety of perspectives. The six-member jury is unnecessarily handicapped.
What should be done? Ample empirical evidence on the jury demonstrates the need to reverse course. Perhaps in the wake of the Zimmerman case, Florida will reconsider its unique position on jury size. Even better: In recent years, the Supreme Court has turned down several opportunities to revisit the question of jury size. Perhaps it should accept the next one.
By: Seidman Diamond, The Miami Herald, July 15, 2013
“Enemies Of The State”: How Do We Prevent The Death Of The Next Trayvon Martin?
Say what you will about the jury’s decision to acquit George Zimmerman, the fact remains that Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year-old teenager, is dead. He was doing what many teen boys do every day — buying candy from a 7-Eleven — before he was shot by a 28-year-old adult in a gated community.
Martin is not the first unarmed young black man to be shot dead, and, sadly, he almost certainly won’t be the last. The Zimmerman trial coincided with the release of Fruitvale Station, a film based on the 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old who was hand-cuffed, face-down, when an Oakland transit agency police officer pulled out his gun and killed him.
Zimmerman will serve no jail time, and could even get the handgun he used in the shooting back from authorities. Johannes Mehserle, the officer who shot Grant, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, served 11 months in prison, and is out on parole.
In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, President Obama released a statement saying, “We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this.”
So how, exactly, can we do that?
Certainly, gun laws are a factor. Progressives have pointed to Florida’s expansive Stand Your Ground laws, which allow you to shoot somebody on public property if you reasonably feel at risk of death or bodily harm, a vague standard prosecutors have complained has made it harder to put armed perpetrators behind bars.
“Effectively, I can bait you into a fight and if I start losing I can can legally kill you, provided I ‘believe’ myself to be subject to ‘great bodily harm,'” writes The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates. “It is then the state’s job to prove — beyond a reasonable doubt — that I either did not actually fear for my life, or my fear was unreasonable.”
Proving that Zimmerman’s fear was unreasonable was difficult because the only other witness, Martin, was dead. Using fear of bodily harm as a legal justification for shooting someone is also tricky in a country where a certain portion of the population believes that young black men are dangerous.
“It is a complicated thing to be young, black, and male in America,” writes Gawker‘s Cord Jefferson, adding:
Not only are you well aware that many people are afraid of you — you can see them clutching their purses or stiffening in their subway seats when you sit across from them — you must also remain conscious of the fact that people expect you to be apologetic for their fear.
If you’re a black man and you don’t remain vigilant of and obsequious to white people’s panic in your presence …. then you must be prepared to be arrested, be beaten, be shot through the heart and lung and die on the way home to watch a basketball game with your family. [Gawker]
The simple, terrible truth is that while gun laws can be changed, people’s attitudes on race are a different matter. Clutching a purse tightly when a young black man enters the subway isn’t illegal, nor should it be. But the culture of fear it’s indicative of has very real consequences.
“As much as I have written and advocated for reducing the number of and access to guns, it wasn’t just the gun in Zimmerman’s hand that shot Trayvon,” writes The Nation‘s Mychal Denzel Smith. “It was a historic rendering of black men as enemies of the state, menaces to society, threats to the American way of life, that caused Trayvon to lose his life that day. How do you legislate against that?”
By: Keith Wagstaff, The Week, July 15, 2013
“The Politics Around Dark Bodies”: The Whole System, Moral And Legal, Failed Trayvon Martin
In a way, the not-guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for his killing of Trayvon Martin was more powerful than a guilty verdict could ever have been. It was the perfect wrenching coda to a story that illustrates just how utterly and completely our system of justice — both moral and legal — failed Martin and his family.
This is not to dispute the jury’s finding — one can intellectually rationalize the decision — as much as it is to howl at the moon, to yearn for a brighter reality for the politics around dark bodies, to raise a voice and say, this case is a rallying call, not a death dirge.
The system began to fail Martin long before that night.
The system failed him when Florida’s self-defense laws were written, allowing an aggressor to claim self-defense in the middle of an altercation — and to use deadly force in that defense — with no culpability for his role in the events that led to that point.
The system failed him because of the disproportionate force that he and the neighborhood watchman could legally bring to the altercation — Zimmerman could legally carry a concealed firearm, while Martin, who was only 17, could not.
The system failed him when the neighborhood watchman grafted on stereotypes the moment he saw him, ascribing motive and behavior and intent and criminal history to a boy who was just walking home.
The system failed him when the bullet ripped through his chest, and the man who shot him said he mounted him and stretched his arms out wide, preventing him from even clutching the spot that hurt.
The system failed him in those moments just after he was shot when he was surely aware that he was about to die, but before life’s light fully passed from his body — and no one came to comfort him or try to save him.
The system failed him when the slapdash Sanford police did a horrible job of collecting and preserving evidence.
The system failed him when those officers apparently didn’t even value his dead body enough to adequately canvass the complex to make sure that no one was missing a teen.
The system failed him when he was labeled a John Doe and his lifeless body spent the night alone and unclaimed.
The system failed him when the man who the police found standing over the body of a dead teenager, a man who admitted to shooting him and still had the weapon, was taken in for questioning and then allowed to walk out of the precinct without an arrest or even a charge, to go home after taking a life and take to his bed.
The system failed him when it took more than 40 days and an outpouring of national outrage to get an arrest.
The system failed him when a strangely homogenous jury — who may well have been Zimmerman’s peers but were certainly not the peers of the teenager, who was in effect being tried in absentia — was seated.
The system failed him when the prosecution put on a case for the Martin family that many court-watchers found wanting.
The system failed him when the discussion about bias became so reductive as to be either-or rather than about situational fluidity and the possibility of varying responses to varying levels of perceived threat.
The system failed him when everyone in the courtroom raised racial bias in roundabout ways, but almost never directly — for example, when the defense held up a picture of a shirtless Martin and told the jurors that this was the person Zimmerman encountered the night he shot him. But in fact it was not the way Zimmerman had seen Martin. Consciously or subconsciously, the defense played on an old racial trope: asking the all-female jury — mostly white — to fear the image of the glistening black buck, as Zimmerman had.
This case is not about an extraordinary death of an extraordinary person. Unfortunately, in America, people are lost to gun violence every day. Many of them look like Martin and have parents who presumably grieve for them. This case is about extraordinary inequality in the presumption of innocence and the application of justice: why was Martin deemed suspicious and why was his killer allowed to go home?
Sometimes people just need a focal point. Sometimes that focal point becomes a breaking point.
The idea of universal suspicion without individual evidence is what Americans find abhorrent and what black men in America must constantly fight. It is pervasive in policing policies — like stop-and-frisk, and in this case neighborhood watch — regardless of the collateral damage done to the majority of innocents. It’s like burning down a house to rid it of mice.
As a parent, particularly a parent of black teenage boys, I am left with the question, “Now, what do I tell my boys?”
We used to say not to run in public because that might be seen as suspicious, like they’d stolen something. But according to Zimmerman, Martin drew his suspicion at least in part because he was walking too slowly.
So what do I tell my boys now? At what precise pace should a black man walk to avoid suspicion?
And can they ever stop walking away, or running away, and simply stand their ground? Can they become righteously indignant without being fatally wounded?
Is there anyplace safe enough, or any cargo innocent enough, for a black man in this country? Martin was where he was supposed to be — in a gated community — carrying candy and a canned drink.
The whole system failed Martin. What prevents it from failing my children, or yours?
I feel that I must tell my boys that, but I can’t. It’s stuck in my throat. It’s an impossibly heartbreaking conversation to have. So, I sit and watch in silence, and occasionally mouth the word, “breathe,” because I keep forgetting to.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, July 15, 2013
“From Lament To Rallying Cry”: Disappointment Is For People Who Have Faith In The System
There isn’t a good reason for me to be as angry as I am over the “not guilty” verdict handed down for George Zimmerman in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. I always knew that would be the outcome. No amount of flat-out lies or inconsistencies in Zimmerman’s story, nor compassion for two grieving parents who lost their son in the most heinous and senseless of ways, was going to override the lack of respect the United States justice system has for black bodies. Disappointment is for people who have faith in the system. I knew that better than I know my own name.
And yet there I was, crying rage-filled tears as “ZIMMERMAN NOT GUILTY” appeared on television. Because no amount of cynicism can override the pain of knowing a 17-year-old boy is dead through no fault of his own, and no one will be held accountable.
Perhaps the state of Florida is at fault: the prosecutors could have put together a stronger case. Perhaps the jury is at fault: maybe they didn’t notice Zimmerman’s lies and call his version of events into question the way they could have. But in truth, the whole damn country is at fault for continuing to allow the racist ideology that renders blackness a threat to the American way of life. The auction blocks and “Colored only” signs are past, but we haven’t learned the lessons of our history; we’re merely products of it.
George Zimmerman was prosecuted, yes, but he was never really on trial. Trayvon Martin’s lifeless body was put on trial for having the audacity to exist and be black. Zimmerman started that the night he killed Trayvon, profiling the lanky teen for being “up to no good” and not belonging in his gated community—when he had no information to go on besides the fact Trayvon was walking in the rain. During the trial, defense attorneys Mark O’Mara and Don West trotted out every racist stereotype attached to black boys throughout history, suggesting that Trayvon used supernatural size, strength and speed to beat Zimmerman. To my disgust, O’Mara literally invoked the same justification for killing Trayvon as was used to justify lynchings. He called to the witness stand Olivia Bertalan, one of Zimmerman’s former neighbors, who told the story of her home being burglarized by two young African-American boys while she and her children feared for their lives. It was terrifying indeed, and it had absolutely no connection to the case at hand. But O’Mara presented the jury with the “perfect victim,” which Trayvon could never be: a white woman living in fear of black criminals. Zimmerman had offered to help her the night her home was robbed. Implicit in the defense’s closing argument: he was also protecting her the night he killed Trayvon Martin.
On MSNBC’s UP w/ Steve Kornacki, Daryl Parks, the attorney for Trayvon’s family, said he didn’t want to call O’Mara a racist. But when you traffic in those racist tropes in a court of law, it doesn’t matter if you’re labeled a racist or not. The damage is done.
In a statement released the day after the verdict was announced, President Obama said: “I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.” But I ask him, and everyone else who says we must respect the verdict: How long are we supposed to remain calm when the laws we are called to respect exist in an open assault on our humanity? The arc of the moral universe bends slowly. Our lives are on the line right now.
But if we are, as I suggested, merely products of our history, then alongside our history of injustice exists a history of resistance, and this, too, has taken shape in the aftermath. I was in New York City to witness and participate in the rally-turned-march that took over the streets of midtown, as thousands of people of marched from Union Square Park to Times Square. Parents brought their children; one wore a homemade sign that read, “Don’t Shoot Me.” People cheered from the sidelines, and on occasion joined in. Cars respected the new traffic laws or were met with fierce opposition when they didn’t. A man stood asking, “Have you ever considered Zimmerman was not guilty?” He identified himself as an attorney, but his question went ignored.
Trayvon’s name became a rallying cry. It mingled with the call-and-response chants of “No justice, no peace!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, the new Jim Crow has got to go!” The police did what they could to stop the march, but in the end they just weren’t any match for the power of a people determined to fight the injustice in this country.
I watched nearly every minute of George Zimmerman’s trial, and the disappointment I felt during that time was replaced by faint bits of hope as I watched so many people come together for Trayvon (and Oscar Grant, and Sean Bell, and Rekia Boyd and Aiyana Stanley-Jones…). It affirmed something I had been feeling in recent months.
For those of us left among the marginalized and oppression, be they black boys buying Skittles in Florida; women raising their voices against virulent anti-abortion measures in Texas, Ohio or North Carolina; prisoners going hungry in California; innocent men awaiting execution in Georgia; little girls lying asleep in Detroit; or transwomen who defend themselves and end up locked behind bars in Minnesota; the time is now to commit to the revolutionary project of living our lives out loud. Our rage is valuable, whether we anticipate its coming or not.
So what’s next? My fellow Nation contributor Salamishah Tillet told me a story about the legendary jazz singer Nina Simone. After the church bombing that killed the four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, Simone went to her shed and tried to make herself a gun. Her husband walked in on her and asked what she was doing. She replied she was making a gun because she wanted to kill someone. He replied, “But you’re a musician.” Then she wrote “Mississippi Goddamn.”
What’s next is that each of us take whatever gift we have and use it in a way that honors and values black life. That is the legacy Trayvon Martin can leave to this world.
By: Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation, July 15, 2013
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