JUSTICE FINALLY SERVED FOR MARISSA ALEXANDER

Post by Maple Heights African American Gazette.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN ON JUSTICE DENIED

Justice Denied Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, is as important as the killing of White mothers’ sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest.         - Ella Baker, Leading Mentor of Black Youth, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960’s             (1964)  Trayvon Martin will forever remain in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till as symbols for the fight for equal justice for all.          - Benjamin Crump, lawyer for Trayvon Martin’s parents             (2013)  The reaction to the not guilty verdict from George Zimmerman’s jury was swift and strong. Young people poured onto the streets in peaceful protests in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C. By 3 a.m. more than 100,000 people signed an online petition urging the Justice Department to pursue civil rights violation charges against George Zimmerman.  The outrage over the killing of an unarmed Black teenager who was doing nothing wrong must continue until some semblance of justice is achieved. People who want to keep faith in American justice feel uncomfortable, upset and disheartened. Where is the justice if walking while Black is enough to get you “stopped and frisked” in New York City and fatally shot in Florida with its senseless violent “Stand Your Ground” law that allows people to defend themselves with deadly force anytime and anywhere they imagine they are or say they feel threatened even if they are the stalker?  Many decades of struggle and progress to eliminate racial profiling, arbitrary arrests, unfair sentencing, imprisonment and criminalization of Black males at younger and younger ages are being reversed by determined special interests like the gun lobby putting profits before the most basic American civil rights. The National Rifle Association and their allies’, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), determined efforts to support and pass "Stand Your Ground" and other destructive laws to protect guns rather than children perpetuates the epidemic of gun violence, especially for Black male teenagers like Trayvon Martin. Black children and teens were 17 times more likely to die from a gun homicide than White children and teens in 2010. Since 1963, 59,265 Black children and teens have been killed by guns -- more than 17 times the recorded lynchings of Black people of all ages in America between 1882 and 1968.  What made a Black male teenager in a hoodie walking home in the rain appear suspicious and “up to no good” in George Zimmerman’s eyes? Would he have stopped a White male teenager? Isn’t it long past time that we have a candid conversation about how we can create a post-racial America for our children and grandchildren beginning today?  Let us refuse to be silent. If Trayvon Martin’s parents had been silent and other voices had not joined with them, George Zimmerman never would have been arrested and never would have been brought to trial. Let us continue to refuse to be silent until all the George Zimmermans of this world are deterred and held accountable for vigilante justice against Black males. Let us refuse to be silent until the killing of Black mothers’ sons is as important as the killing of White mothers’ sons. Only then will we have a post-racial America. Click here to share your comments and find out what others are saying. Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org. Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post.

25 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001 Tel: (800) 233-1200 Children's Defense Fund© 2013 All rights reserved.

THE BLACK SNOB GIVES INSIGHTFUL CRITIQUE OF ZIMMERMAN VERDICT

One of my favorite bloggers wrote an awesome, insightful critique of the Zimmerman acquittal and the state of Black affairs.

The article is so good, I won't try to expound on it.  Just read it ....

Zimmerman Verdict Is the Status Quo, But You Are Not

July 14, 2013, by Danielle Belton


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Related:
Killing in Self-Defense: You Better Be White by Danielle Belton, July 16, 2013


The Last Word – Attorney General Eric Holder questions ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws July 17, 2013

The Snob Talks Zimmerman Trial Aftermath on NPR  Danielle Belton, July 17, 2013

GUN VIOLENCE AND MORALITY

Child Watch® Column: "What Killed President Kennedy and Trayvon Martin?"

Release date: February 22, 2013

"February 26 will mark one year since 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by a gun wielded by self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman after he saw Trayvon walking home from a 7-Eleven with a bag of Skittles and bottle of Arizona iced tea.

 

 

Black children, youths, and families know first-hand that the killing of Black children by gun violence is not new but a relentlessly unreported and under-reported plague that has been disproportionately snuffing out Black child lives for a very long time. Fifteen percent of children and teens are Black but 45 percent of all children and youths killed by guns in 2010 were Black. Black boys 15 to 19 years old were 28 times more likely than White boys the same age to be killed in a gun homicide."

 

 

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CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND:

"Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind^® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go to www.childrensdefense.org.

 

 

Mrs. Edelman's Child Watch Column also appears each week on The Huffington Post."

 

 

Related:

 

The Fifth Column dedicates page to Trayvon Martin

 

 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

MYTH OF A BLACK PRESIDENT

"the Atlantic" fascinating and deeply insightful article by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a must read.   Please read the entire article on "the Atlantic" website.
 

 

"As a candidate, Barack Obama said we needed to reckon with race and with America’s original sin, slavery. But as our first black president, he has avoided mention of race almost entirely. In having to be “twice as good” and “half as black,” Obama reveals the false promise and double standard of integration."
 

 

"The irony of President Barack Obama is best captured in his comments on the death of Trayvon Martin, and the ensuing fray. Obama has pitched his presidency as a monument to moderation. He peppers his speeches with nods to ideas originally held by conservatives. He routinely cites Ronald Reagan. He effusively praises the enduring wisdom of the American people, and believes that the height of insight lies in the town square. Despite his sloganeering for change and progress, Obama is a conservative revolutionary, and nowhere is his conservative character revealed more than in the very sphere where he holds singular gravity—race.

 

Part of that conservatism about race has been reflected in his reticence: for most of his term in office, Obama has declined to talk about the ways in which race complicates the American present and, in particular, his own presidency. But then, last February, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance underwriter, shot and killed a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, armed with a 9 mm handgun, believed himself to be tracking the movements of a possible intruder. The possible intruder turned out to be a boy in a hoodie, bearing nothing but candy and iced tea. The local authorities at first declined to make an arrest, citing Zim­mer­man’s claim of self-defense. Protests exploded nationally. Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea assumed totemic power. Celebrities—the actor Jamie Foxx, the former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, members of the Miami Heat—were photographed wearing hoodies. When Rep­resentative Bobby Rush of Chicago took to the House floor to denounce racial profiling, he was removed from the chamber after donning a hoodie mid-speech."

 

"The moment Obama spoke, the case of Trayvon Martin passed out of its national-mourning phase and lapsed into something darker and more familiar—racialized political fodder. The illusion of consensus crumbled. Rush Limbaugh denounced Obama’s claim of empathy. The Daily Caller, a conservative Web site, broadcast all of Martin’s tweets, the most loutish of which revealed him to have committed the un­pardonable sin of speaking like a 17-year-old boy. A white-­supremacist site called Stormfront produced a photo of Martin with pants sagging, flipping the bird. Business Insider posted the photograph and took it down without apology when it was revealed to be a fake."
 

 

Read the entire article, complete with an excellent interview with Ta-Nehesi HERE 
 

 

 

Related:

The Fifth Column dedicates page to Trayvon Martin

 

Follow the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case

 

The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin

 

The awesome and extremely informative  "106 & Park" BET, March 29th special PHOTOS "RACIAL REALITIES: STAY SMART, STAY ALIVE" is  also available on BET.  Hopefully, the full show special will aire again soon.
 

The Fifth Column dedicates page to Trayvon Martin

 

UPDATE - SEE ALSO: TULSA SHOOTERS CHARGED WITH HATE CRIMES April, 14, 2012


Follow the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case


ANOTHER SITE TO FOLLOW THE GEORGE ZIMMERMAN/TRAYVON MARTIN CASE