Trayvon Martin, Assassinated Again

Jul 22, 2013

Trayvon Martin is this generation’s Emmett Till, the proof that it is still a racist society, that there is still an “open season” on young black men.

When George Zimmerman first saw him, Trayvon was returning to his father’s home after buying an iced tea at a nearby store. No one dared to claim otherwise.

Zimmerman initiated the confrontation. He was the one who followed Trayvon in his car. Zimmerman was told by the police dispatcher NOT to follow Trayvon. He was told by the police NOT to get out of his car. Yet he did both of those things. And he did it with a gun.

When the confrontation that Zimmerman started was over, Trayvon Martin was dead. In a justice system untainted by racism, those undisputed facts would be enough to convict.

The defense claimed that Trayvon Martin fought with Zimmerman. Even if it were true, so what? Trayvon was the one being stalked, he was the one faced by a man with a gun.

If someone stalked you, came on you with a gun, wouldn’t you fight to defend your life?

The only thing Trayvon Martin did wrong was to think he could walk down the street in a society so racist that a young black man walking back from a store could be gunned down like a dog; a society so racist that the police would support his killer; a society so racist that a jury of five white women and one Hispanic woman would unanimously find his killer “not guilty.”

In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was abducted and killed by two white men supposedly because he looked the wrong way at a white woman. Those two white men were also found “not guilty” by an all-white jury.

Fifty-eight years later, some details have changed. But the “justice” system is still violently racist.

People who let themselves be blinded by racism may excuse the murder of Trayvon Martin. A white or Hispanic worker who does that is a fool, helping to reinforce the ditch that racism has cut in the working class.