Speaking of Trayvon Martin and Martin Luther King Jr.

I can't remember all the people who have been shot in America since Trayvon Martin died on February 26, 2012.  Part of that is because I didn't see them all; most shootings don't make national news.  The Martin case didn't at first, though there are many (babbling in social media) who don't remember that.  Even among the local news, the images are usually of a crime scene, and that coverage doesn't last long.  We see police tape, a lot of officers milling around, and then nothing unless they arrest someone.  

Why am I explaining that?  It's similar to what I think each time some chucklehead asks rhetorically, "What about all the other victims of gun violence?"  Because, you know, we only care about THIS case because the media tells us to.  Or not.  

In the beginning, Trayvon's shooting was as ignored by the media as any other.  The dead kid wasn't a famous rapper.  The shooter wasn't a famous athlete.  But in addition to his parents not accepting that the boy was doing anything that would lead to his death, young people across the internet collectively said, "Wait...what?"  As an adult-returned-to-school, days later I learned of the case in a university class.  In the mixed age group, the same "kids" who were active in the Occupy movement led the discussion.  Unlike in most of those conversations that were held before the academics began, all the "old folks" were completely attentive.  All the mothers--black, white, and Latina--seemed to have the same reaction: that could be my kid. 

Of course, the facts don't back up the feeling.  The white mothers were far less likely to have someone see their child walking down a street, decide they *must* be up to no good, and eventually kill them.  Still, statistics don't matter nearly as much as that gut reaction of sympathy.  Soon many people from diverse backgrounds were googling the local reports, joining social media conversations, and drawing the national media in.

Yeah, I've been known to rant about the media to anyone who would listen in my personal life.  But I want to give a resounding "Fuck you" to anyone who states that those of us who care about what happened to Trayvon do so because the media told us to.

And what the hell does any of that have to do with MLK?  

Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the first person to fight for Civil Rights.  He spoke (and is paraphrased by the hour since the verdict)  about his dream for all men to be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, but the burning need behind those words were centuries in the making.  He didn't march on Washington alone.  But King became the stand in, the symbol that encompasses all those who marched and were beaten and jailed but who's names never made it into the text books.  His face became the face of everyone who stood up yet has gone unknown.

And, I would like to tell every asshat who asks why Trayvon is so damned important, is why Trayvon is so damned important.  He was a child killed for no good reason.  As an individual young man, his loss is felt as a tragedy in and of itself, but he also symbolizes every black child who's died because someone though his just walking in his own skin might be a threat.  And don't gt it twisted--we are none of us one thing, and he wasn't only a black boy, but an American child and people of all colors saw in him another of our young lost to gun violence.  

Not everyone has to see it this way.  Not everyone has to care one way or the other.  But the damned questions are not rhetorical, and there are the answers.