Once again we have a situation where a young Black man, who was essentially minding his own business, loses his life due to the fact that someone assumed that he was guilty of something or other just because he was where he was. Where? It can be anywhere. Sean Bell and Amidou Diallo were somewhere in New York city, Oscar Grant was somewhere in the Bay Area, Robbie Tolan (injured) somewhere in Texas and Adolph Grimes somewhere in New Orleans the list goes on. This type of killing is not limited to young men even though they fall victim to it more often than others. Our daughters, grandfathers as well as grandmothers are not immune.
More often than not the killer is a policeman or a gang of policemen who commit the killing in the line of "duty". The Trayvon Martin case is a little different, in that Zimmerman had not even a pretext of authority to take a fiream and confront young Martin. It has never been all that difficult for white folks to get away with killing Black people but if Zimmerman does go free it will remain "open season" on all Black people.
Now while it may appear that America is on trial I would have to say that we Black people are really the ones on trial. How much longer are we going to allow the senseless killing of our people to continue? No matter who the killer is, we have to organize ourselves to bring all the energy and resources that we have into play, in order to turn this situation around. Anything less would be criminal and negligent on our own part. The time to stop this killing is now and the place is anywhere in America where we want to raise our families and secure our communities. If we don't resolve to bring it to an end, whatever the cost, it's not going to stop.
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