The verdict is not surprising in the least, because Trayvon never had a chance at fair chance at justice to begin with. The verdict is simply demonstrative of the institutionally and culturally racist hegemony we live under.
What’s also to note is what lengths both legal teams went to AVOID social justice dialogue, which could’ve made a huge difference. This is what deserves outrage, because despite how I feel about the futility of fixing our system into something “fair”, we need to make known what is broken!
This case has been disingenuously presented in a manner as if race doesn’t come with material conditions, and it’s almost as if there was an elephant in the room. The idea that a locked-and-loaded “neighborhood watch” volunteer with dreams of being a “hero” wearing blue, couldn’t possibly be the kind of person who would profile a kid like Trayvon. He reeks of what thugs in blue do every day.
Let’s examine the material conditions under which we live which allows for an innocent person of color cannot safely walk home after picking up a bag of Skittles. Let’s examine the people the media loves to make out as “good ole boys”, the trigger happy pigs (or aspiring to be) who kill innocent black kids.
Dismantling racism won’t be done with a few days of riots alone, we’ve already done that before. Those verdicts didn’t and couldn’t even change. We need to organize and mobilize against racism and attack the socio-economic conditions that facilitate it.
Want justice? I suggest class-war, because we’re not going to find it in the courts and we won’t find in the streets either. These tragedies will continue to occur until we change the whole fucking system into a world where Trayvon would be able to have made it home in the first place.
To see George Zimmerman put away isn’t what we need. We need society to quit breeding George Zimmerman’s altogether. We need radical social change at every level of society, without it we lose all chances at ever dismantling any systems of oppression.
Solidarity and justice for Trayvon.
[from anarchist memes – see http://politicalblindspot.org/martial-arts-instructor-proves-george-zimmerman-lied/%5D
Trayvon
A boy went to visit his father out of town
Where he had moved, to an upscale neighborhood
It rains a lot in Florida, and it was raining on that night
But everybody says exercise is good
He went out for a walk to the convenience store
To go out and bring some candy back
But some people leave and they never come home
And that night it was all a one-way track
For the Neighborhood Watchman was driving his car
On a rainy night looking for
A young man who might have a part to play
In his personal race war
And what if this trolling vigilante
Sowing terror on racist whim
What if when he found this teenage boy
He instead had found a man more like him
What if things were different
Where would he be bound
What if Trayvon had stood his ground
When Zimmerman approached in an unmarked vehicle
When the high school student ran
What if instead he had stood there in the rain
With his Skittles and his Arizona can
What if trying to avoid a conflict with this cracker
Who was evidently messed up in the head
Trayvon had said I feel like my life’s in danger
And he had shot this vigilante dead
Would this hooded youth be gingerly arrested
Treated for his wounds and then let free
Would he be hailed as a hero by the NRA
By Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity
Would he be found not guilty by any jury in this country
Would he be allowed to keep his gun
Or would he be sitting in a prison cell, watching pundits on the TV saying
That kid really should’ve run