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<p><big><big><big><span>You are here</span><a
href="http://davidswanson.org/blog">Blogs</a> / <a
href="http://davidswanson.org/blog/1">davidswanson's
blog</a> / On Killing Trayvons</big></big></big></p>
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<h1><big><big><big>On Killing Trayvons</big></big></big></h1>
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<p><big><big><big>By <span class="author">davidswanson</span>
- Posted on <span class="date">20 October 2014</span></big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big>This Wednesday is a day of action that
some are calling a national day of action against
police brutality, with others adding "and mass
incarceration," and I'd like to add "and war" and
make it global rather than national. This Tuesday,
the Governor of Pennsylvania is expected to sign a
bill that will silence prisoners' speech, and <a
href="http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10521">people
are pushing back</a>. A movement is coalescing
around reforming <a
href="http://www.popularresistance.org/uniting-to-transform-us-policing/">police
procedures</a> and taking away their <a
href="http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10264">military
weapons</a>. And a powerful book has just been
published called <em><a
href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/">Killing
Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence</a>.</em></big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big>Saving Trayvon Martin would have
required systemic reforms or cultural reforms
beyond putting cameras on police officers. This
young man walking back from a store with candy was
spotted by an armed man in an SUV who got out of
his vehicle to pursue Trayvon despite having been
told not to when he called the police. George
Zimmerman was not a police officer, though he
wanted to be one. He'd lost a job as a security
guard for being too aggressive. He'd been arrested
for battery on a police officer. He had left
Manassas, Va., and its climate of hatred for
Latinos in which he participated, for Florida,
where he was a one-man volunteer neighborhood
watch group in a gated neighborhood. He'd phoned
the police on 46 previous occasions. He apparently
expressed his contempt for Trayvon Martin in
racist terms. When the police arrived, they let
Zimmerman ride in the front seat (no handcuffs, of
course) and never tested him for drugs, testing
instead the dead black boy he'd murdered. When
public outrage finally put Zimmerman on trial, his
defense displayed a photo of a white woman living
in the neighborhood who had nothing to do with the
incident but who was used to represent what
Zimmerman had been "defending." He was found
innocent.</big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big><em>Killing Trayvons</em> is a rich
anthology, including police records, trial
transcripts, statements by President Obama,
accounts of numerous similar cases, essays,
poetry, and history and analysis of how we got
here . . . and how we might get the hell out of
here.</big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big>Recently I was playing a game with my
little boy that must have looked to any observer
like I was secretly spying on people. I found
myself thinking that it was a good thing I wasn't
black or I'd risk someone reporting me to the
police, and I'd find myself struggling to explain
the situation to them rather than yelling at them,
and they wouldn't listen. "What do I tell my son,"
wrote Talib Kweli, "He's 5 years old and he's
still thinking cops are cool / How do I break the
news that when he gets some size / He'll be
perceived as a threat and see the fear in their
eyes." I remember a character of James Baldwin's
explaining to a younger brother on the streets of
New York that when walking in the rich part of
town you must always keep your hands in your
pockets so as not to be accused of touching a
white woman. But a set of rules devised by Etan
Thomas in <em>Killing Trayvons</em> includes:
"Keep your hands visible. Avoid putting them in
your pockets." Opposite advice, same injustice. I
can recall how offended I was when, as a young
white man, I became old enough for a strange woman
in a deserted place to hurry away from me in
panic. Maybe if I'd been black someone would have
prepared me for that. Maybe I'd have experienced
it a lot earlier. Maybe I'd have experienced it as
racist. Maybe it would have been. But would I have
come around to the conclusion, as I have, that
there's nothing I have a right to be indignant
about, that people's fear -- wherever it comes
from -- is more important to reduce than other
people's annoyance?</big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big>But what about fear that leads to
murder? What about white fear of black violence
that leads to the killing of so many African
Americans -- and many of them women, suggesting
that fear isn't all there is to it? Police and
security guards kill hundreds of African Americans
each year, most of them unarmed. In most cases,
the killers claim to have felt threatened. In most
cases they escape any accountability. Clearly this
is a case of fear to be doubted and treated with
appropriate skepticism, fear to be understood and
sympathized with where real, but fear never to be
respected as reasonable or justified.</big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big>We need a combination of addressing the
fear through enlightenment and impeding the
violence with application of the rule of law in a
manner that does not treat murdering black kids as
what any reasonable person would do. We need to
rein in and hold accountable individuals and
institutions -- groups like the NRA and ALEC that
push racist policies on us. Police and neighbors
should not see a black boy as an intruder in his <a
href="http://www.blacknews.com/news/black-teen-with-white-foster-parents-mistaken-for-burglar-neighbors-called-police-and-had-him-arrested101.html#.VEV0BYf2eGE">own
house</a> when his foster parents are white.
They also shouldn't spray chemical weapons in
someone's face before asking him questions.</big></big></big></p>
<big><big><big>
</big></big></big>
<p><big><big><big>The editors of <em>Killing Trayvons,</em>
Kevin Alexander Gray, Jeffrey St. Clair, and JoAnn
Wypijewski put killing in context. What if Trayvon
actually got into a fight with his stalker
superhero? Would that have been a good reason to
kill him? "It takes a jacked-up disdain for
proportionality to conclude the execution is a
reasonable response to a fistfight. And yet . . .
high or low, power teaches such disdain every day.
Lose two towers; destroy two countries. Lose three
Israelis; kill a couple thousand Palestinians.
Sell some dope; three strikes, you're out. Sell a
loosey; choke, you're dead. Reach for your wallet;
bang, you're dead. Got a beef; bang, you're dead."</big></big></big></p>
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<p><big><big><big>This is exactly the problem. High and
low includes supreme courts that kill black men
like Troy Davis, and presidents who kill
dark-skinned Muslim foreigners (some of them U.S.
citizens) with drones, leading Vijay Prashad to
call Zimmerman a domestic drone and Cornel West to
call President Obama a global Zimmerman. Two
bizarre varieties of murder have been legalized at
the same time in the United States. One is
Stand-Your-Ground killing justified by fear and
applied on a consistently racist basis. The other
is drone missile killing justified by fear and
applied on a consistently racist basis. Both types
of murder are much more obviously murder than
other instances that have not been given blanket
legalization.</big></big></big></p>
<big><big><big>
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<p><big><big><big>Stand-your-ground murders are
facilitated by racism; and racist propaganda that
blames the victims protects the killers after the
fact. Drone murders are driven by profit,
politics, power lust, and racism; and the guilt of
President Obama is sheltered by the prevalence of
racist hatred for him -- which comes from
generally the same group of people who support
stand-your-ground laws. (How can Obama be guilty
of any wrong in overseeing a global kill list,
when racists hate him?) Millions of Americans
think of themselves as above the ignorant whites
who fear every black person they see, and yet have
swallowed such a fear of ISIS that even giving
ISIS a war it wants and benefits from seems
justified. After all, ISIS is barbaric. If it were
civilized, ISIS wouldn't behead people; it would
have its hostages commit suicide while handcuffed
in the backseat of police cars.</big></big></big></p>
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