Kevin Alexander Gray - Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence

Published by CounterPunch Books

CounterPunch
PO Box 228, Petrolia, California, 95558

ISBN 978-0692213995

A catalog record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress Control Number: 0692213996

Printed and bound in the United States.

Cover: Trayvon Martin mural,
Youth Radio Oakland Building.

Photography: Tennessee Reed

cartwheel on the blacktop

(Trayvon Martin 2.0)

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

he has wings in his shoes

Trayvon yawns and stretches in the crook of the tree. Slept til dark again. Shrugs. Stretches out his retractable shoe gliders and hangs a slow swinging backflip out of the branches. Into the world again. Blows a kiss at one leaf. Turns to face home.

a rainbow in his mouth

Notices he is on tilt two-thousand. Off-balance more than the sway of waking up. Sugar low. Annoyed to have to hunt for convenience and its stores of chemical fructose. This is a manicured neighborhood. No fruit in these trees but him himself at twilight.

he has sweet tea time travel in a can

Sweetness reloading he blinks at the mission message in his eyelids. Find the little brother. Teach him about sugar. Teach him that he too can fly as nonchalant as hammock rope. Give him one swift hug and then return to the future to plug in his fingers. Banjo music a much better charge than this watered down fuel. Cant wait to get home. He slept into dark. On this world of all worlds. Right during the time of the nightvision nearsightedness. Sigh. He might be late. His shoes brush the sidewalk.

his hooded sweatshirt forcefield threaded through with angel kevlar

Behind him the loud machine for the heavyfooted hunter slows down. He has been detected. Will his teenage camouflage help him or hurt. He sighs. He is so young. Only four hundred years old. He shakes his head and looks back. Remember how they used guns. Remember how they never felt safe enough to breathe or whole enough to listen. Overslept. Over. He sends one telepathic message to the little brother waiting. Quickly embroiders it with sweetness. Love.

At the moment of the explosion the sweatshirt flickers hieroglyphics. Blue light math. He squeezes the can. Liquid sprays everywhere. Hands to the pavement. He wonders if the little brother will understand what he must do.

You Really Think the Killer of Trayvon Martin Will Ever Do Time?

Alexander Cockburn

Id say the chances of George Zimmerman spending time behind bars for killing Trayvon Martin are about zero.

Like most things that happen in America these days, the Trayvon Martin case is turning into yet another hearse trundling the Republican Party to its doom in November.

A brief outline of the facts. Its February 26, 2012. Trayvon Martin is a 17-year-old black kid watching a big basketball game in the home of his fathers fiance in Sanford, a small-town outlier of Orlando, Florida. Sanford has a population of 55,000, about a third black. The fiance lives in a mixed-race, gated community. At halftime Martin goes to the corner store and buys an iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

Its raining and Martin has his hoodie up over his head and is talking to a friend on his cell phone. On his way back he is spotted by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a cop wannabe, self-appointed neighborhood crime watcher. Apparently he has pestered the police station for months with reports of suspicious 12-year-olds walking thro ugh the neighborhood. Zimmerman white dad, Latina mother is wearing a red jacket and blue jeans. In his pocket is a Kel-Tec 9mm automatic pistol.

Zimmerman calls the local station and says hes following a suspicious character. He describes Martin as black and says hes acting strangely and could be on drugs. The teenager starts to run, Zimmerman says. A police dispatcher asks Zimmerman whether hes following Martin, and Zimmerman says he is. The dispatcher clearly says that Zimmerman doesnt need to do that.

Theres a lull in the transmission, and you can hear Zimmerman mutter to himself, These assholes .. . they always get away. On other calls between Zimmerman and the dispatcher he refers to fucking coons. CNN says the words are indistinct, which they arent. CNN also says the case is complicated, which it isnt.

Later the Martin family lawyer relays Trayvons friends account of her last call with him. She says he told her that he was being followed. She says, Run. He says, Im not going to run. Im just going to walk fast. The girl later heard Martin say, Why are you following me? and then another man Zimmerman saying, What are you doing around here? The girl thinks she heard a scuffle because his voice changes like something interrupted his speech.

Mary Cutcher was in her kitchen making coffee that night with her roommate, Selma Mora Lamilla. The window was open, she said. We heard a whining. Not like a crying, boohoo, but like a whining, someone in distress, and then the gunshot, she tells Anderson Cooper on CNNs .

They looked out the window but saw nothing. It was dark. They ran out the sliding glass door, and within seconds they saw Zimmerman.

Zimmerman was standing over the body with basically straddling the body with his hands on Trayvons back, Cutcher said. And it didnt seem to me that he was trying to help him in any way. I didnt hear any struggle prior to the gunshot. And I feel like it was Trayvon Martin that was crying out, because the minute that the gunshot went off, the whining stopped.

The two women said they could not see whether Zimmerman was bruised or hurt. It was too dark.

Selma asked him three times, Whats going on over there? Cutcher said. He looks back and doesnt say anything. She asks him again, Everything OK? Whats going on? Same thing: looked at us, looked back. Finally, the third time, he said, Just call the police.

The women, one white and one Latina, tell Anderson Cooper flatly that they dont believe Zimmermans story of how Martin had suddenly attacked him, punched him in the face, broke his nose and that when Zimmerman, larger than Martin, felt overpowered he pulled out the gun and shot Martin through the chest. (Later Zimmerman declined medical attention.)

In the immediate aftermath, Zimmerman stakes his defense on Chapter 7776.013 of the Florida criminal statute on home protection and the use of deadly force. Para 3 states:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

That is whats colloquially known as the Stand Your Ground law. Thirty states, including my own state of California, have versions of this old English legal concept of My Home Is My Castle. Since I live in a remote rural area inhabited by well-armed people, not all of them on the side of the angels, Ive read our statute from time to time trying to determine what exactly would be the circumstances under which if an armed individual was heading for my house, ten yards from the deck and showing no signs of slowing after my challenges I could justifiably shoot him with my 12-gauge shotgun. Its always struck me as a really hard call. The state may have a Stand Your Ground law, but it really doesnt want people using it as legal shelter.