OBAMA, "IF I HAD A SON, HE'D LOOK LIKE TYRONE"
TRAYVON MARTINS DEATH IS A TRAVESTY, I AM NOT UNSYMPATHETIC. HIS DEATH IS NOW A CAUSE CELEBRE AND THE MOB IS LOOKING FOR BLOOD VENGEANCE. HUEY, DEWEY AND LOUIE FARRAKHAN OF THE NATION OF ISLAM, THE RADICALIZED NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY, AL SHARPTON AND JESSE JACKSON ARE CALLING FOR BLOOD TO AVENGE TRAYVON'S DEATH!
TRAYVONS' DEATH WILL NOT BE AVENGED UNTIL BLOOD IS SPILLED AND COULD RATCHET UP INTO A FULL SCALE RACE WAR IN SHORT ORDER..., HERE'S WHAT USA TODAY OPINES IN A RECENT EDITORIAL...,
From the Olive Street Baptist Church in Sanford, Fla., to New York's Union Square, last month's fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin has tapped into a deep vein of distrust among African Americans.
At the Baptist church in Martin's hometown, stories of violence and hurt poured out from other black mothers and grandmothers. The Internet was alive with a Change.org petition demanding justice for the slain youth. Hundreds marched in Manhattan on Wednesday and rallied in Sanford on Thursday to protest the killing.
How could it be otherwise?
Throughout the nation's history, black men, women and children have been targeted, beaten, lynched and shot, often for a wrong word or look or just being in the wrong place. Police seldom bothered to investigate. Most died in obscurity.
Once in a great while, though, their deaths made a difference. In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old visiting Money, Miss., was yanked from his bed, shot in the head and dumped in a river after he supposedly whistled at a white woman. Till's killers were acquitted by an all-white jury. The uproar over the injustice helped feed a fledgling civil rights movement.
Today, Americans of all races hear echoes of those deaths. While much remains unknown and new facts could emerge, the Trayvon Martin tragedy carries many of the classic earmarks of racial bias. Despite all of the nation's progress in burying its racist past, minorities are still commonly stopped by authorities for no other reason than the color of their skin. Try to find an African-American man who hasn't been stopped for "driving while black."
Martin, it appears, made the mistake of "walking while black."
The details have been widely reported: On Feb. 26, Martin had just come from a convenience store with some Skittles and an iced tea. He was walking in the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community in the Orlando suburb of Sanford that had seen a recent rash of burglaries and thefts. He had on a hoodie, perhaps against the drizzly night. He was heading for the home of his father's girlfriend.
Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, driving his SUV, spotted the teen and called 911. "This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something," Zimmerman told a dispatcher. Armed with a gun, Zimmerman said he was following the guy. The dispatcher told him not to.
Zimmerman didn't listen. He left the safety of his vehicle. After a confrontation of some sort, he shot the unarmed Martin dead. Zimmerman has said it was self-defense. Sanford police didn't press charges.
It might well have ended there, but for a slowly building firestorm, fueled by black celebrities and columnists and social media. On Thursday, the Sanford police chief temporarily, and appropriately, stepped aside. Local prosecutors are now investigating Martin's death. So are the FBI and the Justice Department.
While authorities complete their investigations, a couple of questions are worth pondering. Would Zimmerman have thought a white teen in a hoodie looked like he "was up to no good"? And, most pointedly, if Zimmerman were black and had shot a white, unarmed 17-year-old, would police have let him go?
THE BLACK CRIME WAVE IN AMERICA IS CONTINUING UNABATED, THIS IS OVERLOOKED BY THOSE SEEKING JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON.
JESSE JACKSON FEELS, "BLACKS ARE UNDER ATTACK"
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said Friday that he's grateful the rest of the country has sat up and taken notice of the tragic slaying of Trayvon Martin. But he can't help but wonder: Why has it taken so long for everyone else to recognize the chronic injustices that African Americans face?
"We're surprised that everyone else is surprised," Jackson told the Los Angeles Times. African Americans have tried for decades to get the rest of America to understand their plight, he said, particularly their beliefs that justice is still elusive in many parts of America, especially the Deep South.
Then along comes the Trayvon Martin case, and facts that are not in contention: Volunteer neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman pursued and then gunned down the unarmed 17-year-old last month, and never faced arrest because police said there was no evidence to contradict his claim that he fired in self-defense.
"I hope that this will be a transformative moment," Jackson said.
Jackson was speaking Friday morning from the Chicago offices of his Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He had just returned from duties in Belgium and Switzerland. He was in Geneva on Wednesday as part of a delegation of religious leaders trying to find a way to end the violence in Syria. Jackson was preparing to get back on a plane for a flight south so he can add his voice to the growing protests in and around Sanford, Fla., where Martin's shooting took place.
Jackson said the Martin case is getting plenty of media attention overseas, attention that is both embarrassing to white America and humiliating to black America.
Moreover, he said, the failure to make an arrest in the case takes away the nation's "moral authority" to address injustices in other countries when it fails to do the same within its own borders.
Jackson predicted that the protests will continue to multiply in number and that the ranks of protestors will swell until Zimmerman is arrested.
"As long as he is outside of the court system, the protests will intensify and spill over into other dimensions," Jackson said. "His lack of appearance in the court system is a source of embarrassment and humiliation. He needs to face the court."
Jackson said that there is a mistaken assumption in some corners of America that all racial problems went away with the election of President Obama. "There was this feeling that we were kind of beyond racism," he said. "That's not true. His victory has triggered tremendous backlash."
He added: "Blacks are under attack." African American families are facing record home foreclosures and unemployment. Their children are burdened with student loan debt. States, particularly conservative ones, are passing voter laws that leaders know will disenfranchise blacks and other minorities. Meanwhile, the nation's prisons are brimming with black faces, he said, and their numbers that suggest that the legal system is quicker to send blacks to prison than whites.
Jackson said gunfire in America continues to be a problem for all Americans -- not just blacks. Why, he asked, isn't America outraged, that far more people die of gun violence in one year in America than the number of soldiers killed in the wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan?
"Our disparities are great," he said. "Targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business."
Jackson said he also wants to see the Martin protests accomplish something else beyond justice for the slain teen's family. He said he wants the repeal of Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law, which gives legal protection to people who fight back in self-defense. Some believe that the Florida police were nodding to that law when they declined to arrest Zimmerman after the Feb. 26 shooting.
Many other states have similar statutes, Jackson said, and he wants them all repealed, starting with Florida's.
"No justice, no peace," he said. "The indifference to this kind of pain is just going to intensify the protests."
SO THERE YOU HAVE IT, JACKSON ASSESSES THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA BUT CAN PROVIDE NO ANSWERS WHY THE BLACK CRIMEWAVE GOES ON UNABATED. FOR MANY CITIZENS ITS TIME TO "LOCK AND LOAD" AND PREPARE FOR THE WORST, BECAUSE THIS SITUATION IS ABOUT TO SPIRAL OUT OF CONTROL.
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