Another reason I don't believe there will be an arrest is because the city of Sanford, FL is mobilizing. because white folks are skeered the ni**ers are going to riot when/if it's announced the Prosecutor won't being charges against George Zimmerman, because that's what they do when they don't get their way. Remember?
What I can't understand is why they are mobilizing against these guys, but not these guys? Strike that. Yes I can. Snark
Black folks will be disappointed if charges aren't bought against George Zimmerman, and although the mainstream media is itching for a race war for ratings, black folks aren't stoopid enough to start a war they can't win. To quote the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr~
God grant that we wage the struggle with dignity and discipline. May all who suffer oppression in this world reject the self-defeating method of retaliatory violence and choose the method that seeks to redeem. Through using this method wisely and courageously we will emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright daybreak of freedom and justice.No, black folks will not resort to violence, nor will we sit around waiting on the government to take care of us, because we've learned from experience, that just ain't going to happen. Black folks know how to make a way out of no way.
Wanna know why we African Americans are so upset about Trayvon--aside from the obvious? The obvious being that a child was senselessly slain. It's our history. Probably 85 to 90% of present day African Americans are here as a result of slavery. While none of us are alive that remember being slaves some are still alive who knew slaves and were the children of slaves. More importantly, we have a collective cultural memory of slavery after 400 years of it.
If you know anything about American slavery at all, you know that black children were taken from their parent and sold far away at the whim of "owners" and there wasn't a damn thing that could be done about it. Black parents had to watch as their children were brutalized overworked, underfed, uneducated, sexually assaulted and there wasn't a damn thing to be done about it, because the law sanctioned it.
Later, in post slavery years, in the southern states especially, the legal system continued to allow inhumane and differential treatment towards people with black skin until the the 1970s when the federal government finally stepped in again. In between was 100 years of brutal lynching--both north and south-- black men and boys swinging from the nation's trees, or forced to work southern mines with no pay, and locked away for the slightest crime or no crime at all.
The brutal murder of Emmett Till took place in 1955. As you no doubt know, Emmett was 15-year old kid from Chicago, visiting family in Mississippi, who's 'crime' was whistling at a white girl. White men came and snatched him out of his house, and there wasn't a damn thing that his family could do about it, except of course show his hideously battered and disfigured corpse to the nation. Had his mother not insisted on doing so, we probably Emmett Till would have been another nameless faceless murdered black boy. His murderers were tried and acquitted, then later bragged about the killing.
Fast forward to 2012. A black man holds the highest office in the land. Undoubtedly, we've made progress. But 3 weeks ago when Trayvon Martin was chased down and shot for simply walking in his own neighborhood--unarmed and minding his own business-- and now we watch as the law of the sovereign state of Florida shielded and protects his shooter, all of us are instantly plunged back into the dreadful reality that if you have a black child in America, he can be taken away at a moment's notice and the law will not help you. In fact, it will protect the person that harmed your child. Maybe we haven't come anywhere at all. You might get to be president, but your children can still be slaughtered legally. Only this time we're not taking 'no' for an answer. We will see that justice is done.
One last thing. To those of you who sit silently watching and perhaps not sensing the same outrage at this miscarriage of justice, because your children are safe, or because you don't feel this is your problem, ponder, if you will, Martin Niemöller's words:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Trayvon belongs to all of America. And until you see him as your child too, we all remain in bondage.
H/T Edie Lee Harris
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