Execution of Injustice

Today a jury of white people in Florida found George Zimmerman innocent of murdering Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman admits he killed Martin, shot him at close range. Zimmerman claims that after he stalked and chased the teenager, whose only mistake was being black in a white neighborhood, the child turned on him. Zimmerman says he shot the child in self-defense. Martin was armed with a soda and a pack of candy.

I spent the afternoon at Sisters of the Road,  in a meeting to discuss the year's progress on the Homeless Bill of Rights, and yesterday I attended a meeting to discuss racial profiling and its relation to homelessness and the so-called criminal justice system in the USA. After today's meeting, I interviewed Keith, above, who is a volunteer mentor to teenagers living in the streets. I'm writing an article about Keith for Street Roots.

Most of the kids Keith works with have run away from households with domestic violence and child abuse. Keith was unhoused himself for many years and comes from the same kind of family. But Keith's greatest fear for young people living in the streets is that they may be victimized by the system that created George Zimmerman and exonerated him of murder. Teens in the streets are subject to sexual exploitation, racism, and a system that is more likely to incarcerate them than to provide them with safety. Keith is doing all he can to support unhoused teens, at least the ones he can find. He runs a support group and helps the young people to find resources that can meet their immediate needs for food, housing, and shelter; and he wants to create a home, not a shelter or a day center, but a real home, for about a dozen kids. He's trying to raise money for that project now.

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, posted on Facebook the best statement I've read on this subject, as follows: "If Trayvon Martin had been born white he would be alive today. That has been established beyond all reasonable doubt. If he had been white, he never would have been stalked by Zimmerman, there would have been no fight, no funeral, no trial, no verdict. It is the Zimmerman mindset that must be found guilty - far more than the man himself. It is a mindset that views black men and boys as nothing but a threat, good for nothing, up to no good no matter who they are or what they are doing. It is the Zimmerman mindset that has birthed a penal system unprecedented in world history, and relegated millions to a permanent undercaste. Trayvon, you will not be forgotten. We will honor you - and the millions your memory represents - by building a movement that makes America what it must become. RIP."

I am grateful to Michelle Alexander and to Keith for the work they are doing to change the world.