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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/the-us-v-trayvon-martin/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/the-us-v-trayvon-martin/</a><br>
<p> </p>
July 15, 2013
<div class="article-title"><big><b><big>How the System Worked - The US
v. Trayvon Martin</big></b></big></div>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by ROBIN D.G. KELLEY</div>
<div id="main-text">
<p>In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Texas
Congressman Louie Gohmert, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Senator
Rand Paul, Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley (also sponsor of
his state’s Stand Your Ground law), along with a host of other
Republicans, argued that had the teachers and administrators been
armed, those twenty little kids whose lives Adam Lanza stole would be
alive today. Of course, they were parroting the National Rifle
Association’s talking points. The NRA and the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative lobbying group responsible
for drafting and pushing “Stand Your Ground” laws across the country,
insist that an armed citizenry is the only effective defense against
imminent threats, assailants, and predators.</p>
<p>But when George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed,
teenage pedestrian returning home one rainy February evening from a
neighborhood convenience store, the NRA went mute. Neither NRA
officials nor the pro-gun wing of the Republican Party argued that had
Trayvon Martin been armed, he would be alive today. The basic facts
are indisputable: Martin was on his way home when Zimmerman began to
follow him—first in his SUV, and then on foot. Zimmerman told the
police he had been following this “suspicious-looking” young man.
Martin knew he was being followed and told his friend, Rachel Jeantel,
that the man might be some kind of sexual predator. At some point,
Martin and Zimmerman confronted each other, a fight ensued, and in the
struggle Zimmerman shot and killed Martin.</p>
<p>Zimmerman pursued Martin. This is a fact. Martin could have run, I
suppose, but every black man knows that unless you’re on a field, a
track, or a basketball court, running is suspicious and could get you a
bullet in the back. The other option was to ask this stranger what he
was doing, but confrontations can also be dangerous—especially without
witnesses and without a weapon besides a cel phone and his fists.
Florida law did not require Martin to retreat, though it is not clear
if he had tried to retreat. He did know he was in imminent danger.</p>
<p>Where was the NRA on Trayvon Martin’s right to stand his ground?
What happened to their principled position? Let’s be clear: the
Trayvon Martin’s of the world never had that right because the “ground”
was never considered theirs to stand on. Unless black people could
magically produce some official documentation proving that they are not
burglars, rapists, drug dealers, pimps or prostitutes, intruders, they
are assumed to be “up to no good.” (In the antebellum period, such
documentation was called “freedom papers.”) As Wayne LaPierre, NRA’s
executive vice president, succinctly explained their <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674046242/counterpunchmaga"><br>
</a>position, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good
guy with a gun.” Trayvon Martin was a bad guy or at least looked and
acted like one. In our allegedly postracial moment, where simply
talking about racism openly is considered an impolitic, if not racist,
thing to do, we constantly learn and re-learn racial codes. The world
knows black men are criminal, that they populate our jails and prisons,
that they kill each other over trinkets, that even the celebrities
among us are up to no good. Zimmerman’s racial profiling was therefore
justified, and the defense consistently employed racial stereotypes and
played on racial knowledge to turn the victim into the predator and the
predator into the victim. In short, it was Trayvon Martin, not George
Zimmerman, who was put on trial. He was tried for the crimes he may
have committed and the ones he would have committed had he lived past
17. He was tried for using lethal force against Zimmerman in the form
of a sidewalk and his natural athleticism.</p>
<p>The successful transformation of Zimmerman into the victim of black
predatory violence was evident not only in the verdict but in the
stunning Orwellian language defense lawyers Mark O’Mara and Don West
employed in the post-verdict interview. West was incensed that anyone
would have the audacity to even bring the case to trial—suggesting that
no one needs to be held accountable for the killing of an unarmed
teenager. When <b>O’Mara</b> was asked if he thought the verdict
might have been different if his client had been black, he replied:
“Things would have been different for George Zimmerman if he was black
for this reason: he would never have been charged with a crime.” In
other words, black men can go around killing indiscriminately with no
fear of prosecution because there are no Civil Rights organizations
pressing to hold them accountable.</p>
<p>And yet, it would be a mistake to place the verdict at the feet of
the defense for its unscrupulous use of race, or to blame the
prosecution for avoiding race, or the jury for insensitivity, or even
the gun lobby for creating the conditions that have made the murder of
young black men justifiable homicide. The verdict did not surprise me,
or most people I know, because we’ve been here before. We were here
with Latasha Harlins and Rodney King, with Eleanor Bumpurs and Michael
Stewart. We were here with Anthony Baez, Michael Wayne Clark, Julio
Nunez, Maria Rivas, Mohammed Assassa. We were here with Amadou
Diallo, the Central Park Five, Oscar Grant, Stanley “Rock” Scott,
Donnell “Bo” Lucas, Tommy Yates. We were here with Angel Castro, Jr.
Bilal Ashraf, Anthony Starks, Johnny Gammage, Malice Green, Darlene
Tiller, Alvin Barroso, Marcillus Miller, Brenda Forester. We’ve been
here before with Eliberto Saldana, Elzie Coleman, Tracy Mayberry, De
Andre Harrison, Sonji Taylor, Baraka Hall, Sean Bell, Tyisha Miller,
Devon Nelson, LaTanya Haggerty, Prince Jamel Galvin, Robin Taneisha
Williams, Melvin Cox, Rudolph Bell, Sheron Jackson. And Jordan Davis,
killed in Jacksonville, Florida, not long after Trayvon Martin. His
murderer, Michael Dunn, emptied his gun into the parked SUV where Davis
and three friends sat because they refused to turn down their music.
Dunn is invoking “stand your ground” in his defense.</p>
<p>The list is long and deep. In 2012 alone, police officers, security
guards or vigilantes took the lives of 136 unarmed black men and
women—at least twenty-five of whom were killed by vigilantes. In ten of
the incidents, the killers were not charged with a crime, and most of
those who were charged either escaped conviction or accepted reduced
charges in exchange for a guilty plea. And I haven’t included the
reign of terror that produced at least 5,000 legal lynchings in the
United States, or the numerous assassinations—from political activists
to four black girls attending Sunday school in Birmingham fifty years
ago.</p>
<p>The point is that justice was always going to elude Trayvon Martin,
not because the system <i>failed</i>, but because it worked. Martin
died and Zimmerman walked because our entire political and legal
foundations were built on an ideology of settler colonialism—an
ideology in which the protection of white property rights was always
sacrosanct; predators and threats to those privileges were almost
always black, brown, and red; and where the very purpose of police
power was to discipline, monitor, and contain populations rendered a
threat to white property and privilege. This has been the legal
standard for African Americans and other racialized groups in the U.S.
long before ALEC or the NRA came into being. We were rendered property
in slavery, and a threat to property in freedom. And during the brief
moment in the 1860s and ‘70s, when former slaves participated in
democracy, held political offices, and insisted on the rights of
citizenship, it was a well-armed (white) citizenry that overthrew
democratically-elected governments in the South, assassinated black
political leaders, stripped African-Americans of virtually all
citizenship rights (the franchise, the right of habeas corpus, right of
free speech and assembly, etc.), and turned an entire people into
predators. (For evidence, read the crime pages of any urban newspaper
during the early 20<sup>th</sup> century. Or just watch the hot new
show, “Orange is the New Black.”)</p>
<p>If we do not come to terms with this history, we will continue to
believe that the system just needs to be tweaked, or that the fault
lies with a fanatical gun culture or a wacky right-wing fringe. We
will miss the routine character of such murders: according data
compiled by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a black person is killed
by the state or by state-sanctioned violence every 28 hours. And we
will miss how this history of routine violence has become a central
component of the U.S. drone warfare and targeted killing. What are
signature strikes if not routine, justified killings of young men who <i>might</i>
be Al-caeda members or <i>may</i> one day commit acts of terrorism?
It is little more than a form of high-tech racial profiling.</p>
<p>In the end, we should be able to prevent another Sandy Hook school
tragedy—and the $7.7 million dollars that poured into Newtown on behalf
of the victims suggests a real will to do all we can to protect the
innocent. But, sadly, the trial of Travyon Martin reminds us, once
again, that our black and brown children must prove their innocence
every day. We cannot change the situation by simply finding the right
legal strategy. Unless we challenge the entire criminal justice system
and mass incarceration, there will be many more Trayvon Martins and a
constant dread that one of our children might be next. As long as we
continue to uphold and defend a system designed to protect white
privilege, property and personhood, and render black and brown people
predators, criminals, illegals, and terrorists, we will continue to
attend funerals and rallies; watch in stunned silence as another police
officer or vigilante is acquitted after taking another young life;
allow our government to kill civilians in our name; and inherit a
society in which our prisons and jails become the largest, most diverse
institutions in the country.</p>
<p><em><strong>Robin D. G. Kelley</strong>, who teaches at UCLA, is the
author of the remarkable biography <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1439190461/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);">Thelonious
Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original</a> (2009) and most
recently <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674046242/counterpunchmaga"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.amazon.com']);">Africa
Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times </a>(2012).</em></p>
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