Three years after Trayvon Martin killing, two women's lives intersect

(CNN) When people are faced with overwhelming trauma in their lives, some become consumed by their difficulties, while others emerge stronger for it. In special circumstances, they may find their destiny, and seek to heal the world and make all of us stronger.

Myrlie Evers-Williams and Sybrina Fulton are two great women whose achievements demand our attention. Although their personal stories are separated by five decades, these women share parallel lives. Thrust into a position of leadership for the greater good of society, they have used personal grief over the loss of a loved one to become agents for change.

Ohio wants guns in church and daycare, and why my car was riddled with bullets

This week I have two companion pieces on the issue of gun violence.  First, in theGrio, my commentary on bills introduced in the Ohio legislature which would replicate Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, and permit guns in churches, daycare and schools (link).  It sounds like satire, but I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Finally, check out my piece in Huffington Post (here) and Black Commentator (here) on my personal experience with gun violence last week in Philadelphia.

Trayvon to Voting Rights: Blacks Screwed by 2010 Election

This week I spoke with Denis Campbell, publisher of UK Progressive magazine and the host of Worldview, based in Wales.  We talked about a number of things, including the Trayvon Martin murder trial, the Voting Rights Act, Republican obstruction and my article in theGrio on the impact of the 2010 election on African Americans.  Watch below or follow the link:

American Trifecta: Broken Political, Economic and Justice Systems

People are losing faith in a number of America's institutions because these institutions are failing miserably.

For example, take the U.S. criminal justice system. In one week we learned two things: First, Columbia law professor James Liebman and his students revealed that Texas executed an innocent man named Carlos DeLuna in 1989. DeLuna was executed for the 1983 brutal stabbing death of a young woman at a gas station. Forensic evidence was bungled or destroyed, and the crime scene quickly cleaned up. The actual murderer was Carlos Hernandez -- a man with a history of violence who bore a resemblance to DeLuna, and a self-proclaimed knife murderer who bragged about committing the crime. DeLuna's defense team even mentioned Hernandez to the jury as the real killer, but to no avail. Meanwhile, a condemned man maintained his innocence to his grave, and apparently all Latinos look alike to some key actors in the criminal justice system.

Second, and this relates to the first, the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University announced the creation of a National Registry of Exonerations, a database of more than 2,000 prisoners wrongfully convicted of murder and rape since 1989. The authors of the database found, among other things, that death row inmates -- who are a quarter of those exonerated of murder -- are exonerated nine times more often than other murder convicts. And false convictions are typically the result of prosecutorial misconduct, perjury and bad eyewitness testimony.

In other words, the database confirms what many have maintained for quite some time, which is that the imprisonment and execution of innocent men and women are common, and far more common than you thought. Carlos DeLuna, Troy Davis and Cameron Todd Willingham may not be aberrations, but rather part of a troubling pattern.

Moreover, if the criminal justice system is allowed to exist in such a broken, dysfunctional and corrupt state, what does that say about the system itself, and those who allowed to administer it? After all, systems and institutions are made up of human beings, who have their own agendas, interests, foibles, flaws and prejudices that often conflict with the common good.  Meanwhile, born and raised in the "land of the free," many were conditioned to accept things as they are, assuming our institutions work well and in our best interests. Everyone who is punished is guilty, and the innocent are protected, or so they believed. But that's not always the case.  

Cracks in the criminal justice system reflect incompetence and negligence by some defense lawyers, judges and prosecutors. And prosecutors, at their worst, want to score a big win --  regardless of the tactics employed, and never mind issues of guilt or innocence of the accused, for that matter. So sometimes, they will strike black prospective jurors, coerce witnesses or hide or destroy evidence. Careers are built, livelihoods made and profits amassed through the human raw materials of the prison-industrial complex. And prisons and their contractors need warm bodies, sometimes dead bodies, to justify their existence.

If Carlos DeLuna and the exonerations database represent a turning point in the criminal justice system -- particularly the death penalty -- then other systems have had their turning points these days. For example, problems in the U.S. financial system, in the form of the Great Recession, the subprime mortgage fiasco and the student debt crisis, have precipitated a public discourse on economic inequality, and a critical look at capitalism itself. The conduct of commercial banks, engaged in risky casino gambling with other people's money, has led to renewed calls for re-regulation. Further, the injection of Bain Capital in this political season has placed the spotlight on vulture capitalism, where companies are chopped up and workers jettisoned, all for the profits of the few rather than the nation's economic well-being.

On the political side, it was the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, which gave a blessing to unlimited corporate influence in elections. This resulted in the birth of the Super PAC, the expansion of legalized bribery, and the ability of a small group of hyper-wealthy individuals to determine the outcome of the political process. Perhaps one of the more insidious examples of corporate influence peddling and the buying of lawmakers was ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, sponsored by major corporations, was responsible for a number of offensive policy initiatives across the country, including "stand your ground" laws implicated in the Trayvon Martin shooting death, forced, legislation mandating intrusive ultrasounds for pregnant women seeking abortions, and voter ID laws that stand to disenfranchise millions of people.    

America's criminal justice system is broken, but so are its economic and political systems.  That's quite a trifecta. In each case, the folks running the show are engaged in a winner-take-all proposition. In their adversarial worldview governed by pathological individualism, there always are winners (themselves and their friends) and losers (everyone else). As crimes are committed in high places, we are made to turn on the wrong enemies, powerless scapegoats from the poor and working class, and ethnic, racial and religious minorities. They make you believe that criminalizing, or killing, or deporting, or ostracizing these scapegoats will make your problems go away. And as they deflect attention from their own wrongdoing by way of smokescreens, they count on your undying allegiance to the system, and fealty to the status quo.

And yet, people are waking up. When citizens begin to question the institutions that have failed them and society for the benefit of the few, that's when real change has a chance to peek through the window. But we run the risk of missing that window of opportunity.  

theGrio: Whites are mostly missing at Trayvon Martin rallies

Why are white protestors largely missing in action at the Trayvon Martin rallies?

Across America, thousands of protestors are attending rallies for Martin, the 17-year-old black teen who was shot to death on February 26 by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida. Even in Toronto, Canada and as far away as London, England, where racial profiling also occurs, demonstrators sported hoodies and demanded justice for Martin in front of the U.S. Embassy.

For people of all backgrounds in this country, Trayvon's death is striking a nerve. Over 2 million people have signed a petition on Change.org demanding justice -- a petition started by a Kevin Cunningham, a white man who studied law at historically black Howard University.And to be sure, many non-black people are attending the rallies. But it is worth noting that while blacks are anywhere from 12 to 33 percent of the population in the communities holding these rallies, 90 percent of the protestors appear to be black, based on media observations.

Go to theGrio to read more

Trayvon Martin and the Execution of the Innocent

The killing of Trayvon Martin reminds us that the death of an innocent person is senseless and tragic, whether at the hands of a self-appointed executioner, assassin, vigilante or lynch mob - or the state itself. Whether the violence is privatized or state-sponsored, the end result is inherently barbaric.


Like so many others in the past, black boys have provided a convenient target, and a scapegoat that was made to order.


Hoodies are by no means the monopoly of black and Latino young people and yet,hoodies are being used as a proxy for black criminality. And the badge of black criminality, in turn, stems from the stigma of slavery. Based on the assumption that two or more black men congregating in public constituted an uprising, the Slave Codes - and the Black Codes after the Civil War and Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction - restricted the movement and activities of black people. The goal was to limit their freedom and deprive them of their rights.


And under the Fugitive Slave Act, officials could deputize entire white communities to hunt down and capture suspected fugitive slaves, whether or not they actually were slaves. Ultimately, slave or free, all blacks were slaves, or criminals for that matter. No warrant was necessary, just someone who claimed ownership, whether or not that person actually was a slave owner. Yes, the George Zimmermans of that day thought they had a right, because they did. In fact, it was their duty.


For years, black mothers and fathers have advised their sons on what and what not to do or say when confronting white folks in public, in an effort to save their babies’ lives from the Ku Klux Klan, the angry mob, the police, and other purveyors of extrajudicial executions. Black men were lynched and disappeared, later found in some river, as was the case with Emmett Till in 1955 Mississippi. Till was lynched by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman.


When lynching found its way to the court system, it was dressed up and made respectable under the guise of capital punishment. Same lynch mob, different venue - or at least, the mob was told to go home and let the kangaroo courts reach the desired result.


In 1944, 14-year-old George Stinney became the youngest person in the past century to meet his death in the electric chair. At 5’ 1” and all of 95 pounds, the diminutive black boy was convicted of the impossible - applying blunt force trauma to the heads of two white girls by way of a railroad spike, shattering their skulls simultaneously in multiple places and leaving them in a ditch. There was no physical evidence. Stinney was interrogated without parents present, and coerced into a confession of which there was no written record. The all-white-male jurydeliberated for only 10 minutes before passing judgment on one of their so-called “peers.” They needed to tie someone to the murders, and Stinney was the perfect scapegoat.


Fast-forward to today. The National Rifle Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council - or ALEC, the Koch Brothers-funded operation that has brought us voter ID, union-busting, forced transvaginal ultrasounds and other deplorable legislation - want to enact “Stand Your Ground” laws in all 50 states. The law, which is supported by corporations, adopted by at least 21 states and first adopted in Florida, breaks with centuries of legal tradition. The Castle Doctrine allows people to use deadly force in defending the home if they have a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily harm to themselves or others. Deadly force, however, was a last option, as there was a “duty to retreat” in order to defuse the situation.


Meanwhile, under “Stand Your Ground” laws, there is no duty to retreat. A person has a right to “stand one’s ground” and use deadly force anywhere he or she feels threatened - in the home or on the street. Critics rightly concluded the law lays the groundwork for a shoot ‘em up, Wild Wild West environment. Moreover, it doesn’t take much legal knowledge to realize that the new law forever turns the concept of self-defense on its head.


And those who are inclined to “blame it on a black man” have found their excuse to kill a black or Latino youth because they don’t like them or feel threatened by them, and believe youth of color are dangerous and prone to violence. This paves the way for Trayvon Martin-style, race-based assassinations - a privatized sort of execution made legal, and vigilante justice with all the guns you care to use. Now, this should concern you.


Not that the state-sponsored variety of executions is any better.

Trayvon Martin as Emmett Till

In my column in theGrio this week I examine the Trayvon Martin killing and its wider implications for the country:

Trayvon Martin's killing continues to expose the problems black men face, the low priority they are assigned as black victims, and the unfair treatment they face at the hands of the police and in the justice system.
Unfortunately, there have been too many Emmett Tills and Trayvon Martins, each a catalyst in his or her own right.

Check out theGrio for more.