In a prison cell, Charles Manson is drooling.
I don’t know what you say to a young black boy or mothers of young black boys if the message of this is you can be pursued down the street by someone with a gun, and when you try to defend yourself, that person is justified in shooting you dead. I know the hazards of trying to second-guess a jury. But of what I understand of the facts, it’s a chilling thought that you can be in a neighborhood, out buying a soda and a pack of Skittles, and have your life taken from you by someone who just thinks you don’t look like you belong there.
—Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
…we never seem to accept the fact that race in this country is real, that color will get you killed.
This is, for many Americans, another piece of evidence of the incontrovertible contempt that this nation often shows and displays for black men. … George Zimmerman knew nothing of Trayvon Martin’s character; all he saw was his color.
Fifty years after the March on Washington, while the Voting Rights Act is being gutted, speaking of the Justice Department, what they’ll do about that perhaps, something is wrong when adults can racially profile children. Trayvon Martin was a child racially profiled and gunned down.
The murders perpetrated by members of Charles Manson’s “Family” were inspired in part by Manson’s prediction of Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise from tension over racial relations between blacks and whites.
Comin’ down fast but don’t let me break you…
UPDATE at 2157…
More…
It goes to the Justice Department. Clearly there are grounds for civil rights charges here. The mother and father of Trayvon Martin and I, with their lawyers, met with the U.S. attorney in Florida the day I went down there to organize the first national rally there. And we always said there would be a plan B.
—Al Sharpton
There was no—you speak of jury of your peers: there was no man on the jury—Trayvon was a black boy—there was no man, no black on the jury. So at least the idea of jury of your peers was a stretch all the while.
—Jesse Jackson
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