by Dennis Loo
Trayvon Martin is the 17-year-old black teen carrying the suspicious and threatening weapons of a bag of Skittles and iced tea and walking while black in a gated, white community in Sanford, Florida in February.
No doubt in mortal fear for his life, neighborhood watch cum vigilante George Zimmerman coped with his fears of being Skittled and iced tea’d to death by Trayvon by chasing after Trayvon. Any black male walking around in a gated community, for god’s sake, is just asking for trouble! I mean, don’t they know where they belong?
This is what you do when you feel afraid for your life – you chase the person you’re afraid of.
If that person tries to get away from you, well, that’s just more evidence that they are really trying to get you and, of course, you then pursue them even more aggressively, confront them, and then you have no choice but to use your gun to shoot them before they Skittle you to death.
Scott Sundby, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law is quoted in a Huffington Post article about this case and referring to the 2005 law that allows people to use deadly force if they feel threatened called "Stand Your Ground,"
"You cannot provoke the confrontation. You cannot be the instigator and then claim ‘stand your ground.’”
Trayvon Martin’s murder and the rationales offered by his murderer Zimmerman remind me of the justifications we are being given for an attack upon Iran and the justifications that we were given when the U.S. attacked Iraq:
“Iran (or Iraq) is building WMD and if we don’t get them first, they’re going to get us.”
Word to Iran – don’t start importing Skittles and iced tea or you’ll really get bombed.
Dennis Loo is a member of the World Can’t Wait Steering Committee. This article originally appeared on his website dennisloo.com on March 21, 2012.