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These assholes always get away.
George Zimmerman
Two New York City police officers gun down unarmed 16-year-old Kimani Gray as he leaves a friend's birthday party in March. No one has been arrested.
Two Pasadena, Calif., police officers in March 2012 shoot down unarmed college student Kendrec McDade, 19, claiming they thought he had a gun in his waistband. No one is arrested. The district attorney clears the cops.
Johannes Mehserle, a subway cop in Oakland shoots Oscar Grant in the back of the head as Grant lay face down on a BART station platform. Mehserle is acquitted on murder and voluntary manslaughter charges. He serves eight months of a two-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter.
The List Goes On
NYPD officers Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver and Det. Marc Cooper are charged after they and two other officers fire 50 bullets into a car in 2006, killing unarmed 23-year-old Sean Bell (who was to be married the next morning) and wounding two friends. All three are acquitted of manslaughter or reckless endangerment.
The New York City detective who shot unarmed Timothy Stansbury Jr. in a stairwell in 2004 after he claimed Stansbury "startled him;" the NYPD cops who killed Ousmane Zongo and Rahmarley Graham; the Las Vegas policeman who gunned down Orlando Barlow as Barlow got down on his knees to surrender; the Pensacola, Fla., cop who tased and then fatally ran his car over bicyclist Victor Steen, 17, in 2009 — all walked away free.
Now, George Zimmerman.
The not guilty verdict out of Sanford, Fla., last night was clearer than the tears that rolled down the faces of Trayvon Martin's heartbroken supporters, louder than the gunshot that ended the 17- year-old's life that fateful night more than a year ago.
It was chilling. It was saddening. And it was utterly and completely expected.
The message behind the verdict was clear also: In these United States, black life continues to mean nothing. It exists solely at the will and whim of white folks.
What else can you possibly be saying when a child-killing piece of crap like George Zimmerman is allowed to walk? When you acknowledge that Zimmerman racially profiled and zeroed in on Martin for no real reason, followed and then chased the boy, grabbed him, got into a fight with him and then shot and killed him? When, even after acknowledging all that, you still decide that Zimmerman has done nothing wrong?
What, really, does that leave for black mothers and fathers to do, to say, to their children?
Minding His Own Business
Martin did what he was supposed to do. He was walking home, minding his business. He minded his business even after being confronted by a stranger. He tried to ignore him. He tried to run away. And when none of that worked, he tried to stand his ground.
For that, he was shot through the heart.
Now, as we've learned, one American jury sees nothing wrong with that picture.
I'll tell you what I won't tell my children. I won't tell them everyone's equal in America. I won't tell them that justice is blind. I won't tell them to believe in the inherent "good nature" of most of their countrymen. And I won't tell them that the "authorities" always can be trusted or that "the system" always works.
But neither will I tell them to just lay down and die. They will know that it's OK to stand up, to resist. They will know -- no matter what some screwed-up southern jury says -- that their lives are precious and meaningful and deserve to be safeguarded the same as anyone's.
Children Will Learn
And believe me, they will know how to protect themselves from the George Zimmermans of this world.
Because I don't want to have to depend solely on a broken and racially biased justice system to do something as fundamentally humane as uphold a child's right to live. Because I'm tired of watching black people get slaughtered and their killers acquitted by a justice system that always seems to greet the affirmation of black life with "reasonable doubt."
Because, to paraphrase Zimmerman himself, these assholes will keep on getting away -- until those of us who continue to die at their hands figure out how to stop them once and for all.
