Trayvon Martin’s parents are speaking now, grief etched not just in their faces but in their very posture. It will take years before life is no longer a living hell for them. Losing a child is a special kind of hell but there are different support groups for those who lose beloved children to murder (or suicide) because the emotional dynamic is so complex & different from losing a child to illness.
Just as the chorus of libertarian half-wits emerges (on social media & twitter) denouncing the thunderous opposition to the Zimmerman verdict as a distraction from Syria, the NDAA, the NSA, & other political issues, Sybrina Fulton & Tracy Martin remind us of the nature of this crime: a teenage boy, still young enough to be sucking children’s candy & barely old enough to drive, was hunted down by a grown man (nearly twice his age) with a loaded gun, shot down, & then found guilty in a US court of law & in the media for his own murder. And the libertarians think public outrage is a distraction!? That’s because they are ignorant of or indifferent to the hundreds of Black youth shot down by police violence or because they think racism in political life inconsequential.
Trayvon Martin was just a boy on a candy run who must have been very scared to see an armed & hateful lug stalking after him. The outrage & the grief & the protests in solidarity with him are not distractions but express all that is best & all that is hopeful in this country.
May our little brother RIP--& may we continue to put the murder of Black youth at the very heart of US politics--where it belongs.
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