Trayvon Martin

A month after starting my blog last year, I was going to write about the Trayvon Martin murder but thought, nah, I’m not writing anything political on my blog.  He had been dead a month then.

So I planned to go to a Trayvon Martin rally at Union Square.  The closest I came to broadcasting anything about Trayvon Martin was a post on Facebook, announcing that I was going to the demonstration, wearing my hoodie.  I didn’t post pictures or say anything else after that on social media, but did subscribe to the Justice for Trayvon Martin Facebook page.

The rally was planned for 6PM but I got there and saw the usual, some left over ragtag Occupy Wall Streeters, skateboarders, students from NYU and homeless people.  There were also police standing in groups at different points of the square.  I looked for signs of a crowd convening but saw nothing, so approached people, asking if they knew about a Trayvon Martin demonstration.  They didn’t but the police did.  “They’re scheduled to be here 7pm,” one said.

While questioning whether to wait, I went to Starbucks, ate a piece of cake, drank coffee and read some old philosophy.  I read from Socrates, who said in this book that physically harming someone else is the worst damage you could do to your own soul.

Later, through the Starbucks window, I saw people gathering and was glad I had decided to stay.  I hopped off my seat and walked to the crowd.

An hour later, holding a memorial candle, I stood center stage amidst a few hundred people of all races, also holding candles.  Now it was dark.  I quoted what I had just read in Starbucks from Socrates, in relation to George Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin, and yelled out to the crowd that it is a “fucking shame” – yes I was angry – that this beautiful woman’s son has become internationally known for this, instead of becoming internationally known for discovering a scientific contribution helping to cure neurological diseases.  At the time I had an egoistic fantasy that my four year old nephew would grow up to become a neurosurgeon.  But could he have the same fate as Trayvon Martin?  There’s a picture on my refrigerator of my nephew that resembles Trayvon Martin as a child.

Later on the bus, on the way home, a woman got on and walked by me.  “You were great tonight,” she said.

I’m tired of this shit happening every year.  We’re going in circles in this country.  I’ve written before that it doesn’t make a difference in this republic that the president is biracial.

If Zimmerman were black and Trayvon Martin white, his ass would have been jailed, ASAP!  What are the solutions for black people, whose children aren’t protected in their own country? This is what I mull over now.

In the nineties a fifteen year old named Latasha Harlins walked to the register in a convenience store to pay for an item.  The store owner accused her of stealing the item in her backpack.  So she reached over, tousled with her and wrested the item from her bag.  In defense, Latasha punched her in the face.  The woman pulled out a gun and shot her in the head.  The white female judge ruled that for the murder of this, child, this store owner should get probation with no time served.

There’s “fallout” from living in this kind of a culture — those who fall between the cracks, black, white or otherwise.  And black people shouldn’t make excuses for bona fide hoodlums, but this is evil.

When Bernhard Goetz shot those black kids who tried to rob him on the train, it was justified.  This is another scenario but to paint a different part of the picture – when those twenty children were murdered in Newtown, I was devastated, they were just children, it didn’t matter that they were white.  And if the murderer had been black, I would have been just as devastated, because they were children.  This is the same sentiment I would expect to receive for our black children.