Mario Tama/Getty Images
Trayvon Martin's body was found in this part of the Retreat at Twin
Lakes in Sanford, Fla., where his father's girlfriend lives.
By DAN BARRY, SERGE F. KOVALESKI, CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and LIZETTE ALVAREZ
SANFORD, Fla. — Once again, a river of
protest raged through Sanford this weekend to demand justice in the
name of an unarmed black teenager shot dead. It gathered strength in
front of the historic Crooms Academy, the first high school for black
students in Seminole County; surged through the streets; and formed a
flood of grief and outrage just outside the Sanford Police Department.
Once again, thousands chanted the name of Trayvon Martin, 17, the
youth killed with one bullet while returning to a home in a gated
community where he was a guest. Once again, they cried for the arrest
of George Zimmerman, 28, the neighborhood watch coordinator who has
claimed self-defense under a Florida law with the assertive name Stand
Your Ground.
With five weeks' passage, the fateful encounter between a black youth
who wanted to go to college and a Hispanic man who wanted to be a
judge has polarized the nation.
And, now this modest central Florida community finds its name being
mentioned with Selma and Birmingham on a civil rights list held sacred
in black American culture, while across the country, the parsing of
the case has become cacophonic and political, punctuated by pleas for
tolerance, words of hatred, and spins from the left and right.
The racial divide that once partly defined Sanford, with U.S. 17-92
serving as the inviolable line separating black and white, has faded
over the decades, leaving a casually integrated downtown. Yet the
sense remains among residents of both races that the Police Department
has not come as far as the city as a whole.
Velma Williams, its sole black city commissioner, calls Sanford "a
small, friendly, good city." But she said that a string of unsolved
cases had raised questions over whether the police had a "cavalier
attitude" whenever "a black male is murdered." Nonsense, countered its
acting police chief, Darren Scott, who is also black. "Everyone here
in the city gets fair and equal treatment."
That assertion of justice for all — in Sanford and throughout the
United States — has been challenged, though, by a progression of
events that began so innocently, so ordinarily: A teenage boy in a
gray hooded sweatshirt leaves a 7-Eleven's neon brightness with his
purchase of some candy and an iced tea, and heads back into the wet
Sunday evening of Feb. 26, back to a residential complex with a
forbidding gate and a comforting name.
Trayvon Martin was more than welcome there; he was expected.
With his hood up as the rain came down, Trayvon made his way to one
gated community among many, the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Past a dozen
storefronts, four of them vacant. Past signs and billboards shouting
"Now Leasing!" and "Rent Specials!" His was a tour of a post-bust
stretch of Sanford.
For more than two years now, Trayvon's father, Tracy Martin, a truck
driver from Miami, had been dating Brandy Green, a juvenile detention
officer in Orlando. She lived at the Retreat with her 14-year-old son,
Chad, and it was not uncommon for the Martins to drive up from Miami
for overnight visits.
Over six feet tall and lanky, Trayvon was interested in girls,
computer games, sports and the beat of the rap and hip-hop emanating
from the ear buds of his smartphone. Sleeping in Miami Dolphins
bedsheets, he was all teenage boy, and more.
He called himself "Slimm" on Twitter, and used a handle,
@no_limit_nigga, that echoed a song by the rappers Kane & Abel. On
Facebook, he expressed interest in airplanes and "South Park"; Bob
Marley and LeBron James. On MySpace, he posted snapshots of his young
life: admiring an airplane; fishing with his father; displaying a cake
decorated with the words "Happy Birthday Tray."
Easygoing, with a default mood set at "chillin'," as one schoolmate,
Suzannah Charles, put it. The kind of kid who made tiny cakes in an
Easy-Bake Oven with his 7-year-old cousin; who spoon-fed a close
uncle, Ronald Fulton, who is quadriplegic, when his nurse was
unavailable; who was an integral part of a close-knit family — raised
properly, family members say, by Mr. Martin and his ex-wife, Sybrina
Fulton, who works for Miami-Dade County's housing agency.
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/us/trayvon-martin-shooting-prompts-a-review-of-ideals.html
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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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