Sunday, March 25, 2012

Trayvon Martin


On Saturday, DC became one of the latest sites for protest rallies across the country on behalf of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager slain by self-appointed vigilante neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. As we all have become painfully aware, Trayvon was only carrying candy and an ice tea when he was gunned down.
The rally in DC had a consistent, strong undertone-justice for Trayvon’s killer and demands that he be put under arrest and made to stand trial in a court of law. One speaker after another noted that if the situation had been reversed, a thorough investigation would have been done and Trayvon would undoubtedly be in jail now, waiting to be arraigned on charges. Others blasted the justice system that allowed this tragedy to take place, the profiling of black men, especially young black boys and vowed to continue to protest and demonstrate until Zimmerman is brought up on trial.
But on what would have been the 100th birthday of the late civil rights activist Dr. Dorothy Height, few speakers at the rally brought up what seems to be unspoken and unanswered s in our community. Why do we not have the same type of outrage that we have for Trayvon when another black life is taken by another black life? Why do we have a culture of calling people snitches and threatening individuals who cooperate with law enforcement when there’s black on black crime? Why is it seen as “acting white” when black kids want to and do well in school, want to go to college and want to better their lives? The ironic thing  is that some folks out here protesting Trayvon’s murder might have saw him as acting white in any other context had he not been murdered because he was an A/B student. But because he was a good student and a good kid, that made him a “perfect victim” in contrast to what we know about his killer, who apparently had more than one run-in with the law and wasn’t exactly scholar material.
What will happen after the days and weeks when Trayvon’s murder is no longer a leading topic on Twitter, when the investigation is closed and hopefully Zimmerman is tried and convicted on second degree murder charges? Will Trayvon’s murder and the resulting activism be a flash in the pan or the beginning of a mentality change in our community? Will we start demanding a stop to black on black crime and hopefully reverse the cycle that leads to the prison industrial complex? Will we stop the no snitching and gang culture that decimates black lives? Will we hold ourselves accountable to further our education and keep improving ourselves-even when it’s hard, when it seems like there is no way out and even in the face of racism? Will we volunteer and work to better our communities and believe there is nothing too small or too little we can do towards that goal?
Will we start taking our community and lives seriously so that if there is another, God forbid, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman situation, law enforcement and the justice system will feel compelled to their jobs and not profile and make terrible assumptions and judgments like they did about Trayvon?

This is our world.  What will you do?


By Nicole Lewis, Published: March 25, 2011