The debates are
over. The passions on Facebook have simmered. Everyone
had an opnion, few knew the facts and honestly? That
didn't matter. Most that sided with Zimmerman in the
trial still acknowledged how unfair the whole thing
was. And when all the hours spent raging and debating
were through? I simply felt depressed. For the first
time in years really. I kept coming back to one
thought:
What exactly are
we supposed to tell our kids to do when being followed
by a stranger?
And forget me and
my little white girls, what on earth does a black
family tell a black son? Is he supposed to knock on a
door in the neighborhood and ask for help? Looking
all.... black? Does he continue to walk slow to make
sure not to be suspicious? Run and not worry how he
looks? Or, what I've always believed if you're
actually confronted? HIT FIRST, HIT HARD.
Don't give them time, get them to the ground and THEN
run. Every choice for him is wrong. So I wrote a
song...
Forgot I could
actually still do that. I'm very proud of it.
Unfortunate that I needed a week of processing to
pull that off, it would've been far timelier the night
of the verdict. But it's very simple, subtle and just
exactly what is bummin' me out so much. Will somebody
tell me what he was reasonably supposed to do to avoid
death. If he was armed was he allowed to shoot
Zimmerman? Wow, actually Obama just said
that:
"I just ask
people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and
armed, could he have stood his ground on that
sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would
have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who
had followed him in a car, because he felt
threatened? And if the answer to that question is
at least ambiguous, it seems to me that we might
want to examine those kinds of
laws."
And wow, he
trumped me. Trayvon was being followed, of
COURSE he felt threatened, and he still shouldn't
have the right to pull out a gun and SHOOT Zimmerman.
The issue is the law, and that's all we can really
hope for with this case: a re-examination of those
laws. They were midguided from inception to now and
that's the other heartbreak of the case - the jurors
didn't screw up. They read the law, they followed the
law, and had absolutely no way to convict Zimmerman.
As well, Zimmerman's lawyers were able to keep
"initial aggressor" out of the jury instructions
which would've gotten him manslaughter - easy. But at
issue is the law, we can change that and it can at the
very least be named after Trayvon.
