Canonizing Trayvon Martin

Canonizing Trayvon Martin

 

With Pope Francis scheduled to officially recognize former Popes John XXIII and John Paul II as canonized saints in the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday, it’s appropriate that we pay homage to an unofficial American saint-in-the-making, black martyr, Trayvon Benjamin Martin.

If eventually secularly sanctified, Martin’s sainthood would be unique.

The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old black man-child, by 29 year old, mixed-race neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in the early evening of February 26th, 2012, was an avoidable national tragedy, but hardly grounds for Trayvon’s sainthood in any sense.

It was avoidable because Martin failed to control his rage at being accosted and challenged and because of Zimmerman’s overzealousness in performing his volunteer job of protecting his Sanford, Florida community.
I
t evolved into a national tragedy, in fact, a national travesty, when Zimmerman was pre-judged guilty and threatened with execution by radical civil rights agitators. 

That unpunished, outrageous threat by the New Black Panther Party accompanied the mainstream media wildly sensationalizing and twisting the truth about the defendant and the incident and was further exacerbated by the president of the United States needlessly interjecting himself in a local affair, thereby intentionally or unintentionally helping ignite a national firestorm over race, prejudice, and the equity of “Stand Your Ground” laws.

(See graphic, including previously suppressed, photos of Martin and Zimmerman here http://tinyurl.com/k9blrzo.)

When George Zimmerman was totally exonerated by a jury of his peers in July, 2013 and the FBI regretfully conceded it found no racial bias in the shooting, overly optimistic observers assumed, hoped, that the unfortunate spectacle was over and done with. 

We naively felt that Martin would and should forever be fondly remembered by his family and friends and that  Zimmerman would and should be permitted to live out his life as an innocent, free man.

Of course, as often detailed in this space, none of those hopes came to fruition.

Following the not guilty verdict, black agitators like the New Black Panther Party, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson reacted by ramping up their threats and racial hatred.  Obama’s MSM continued to publish pictures depicting Trayvon as an innocent 12 year old instead of the thuggish, menacing 17 year old he had become.  Martin’s memory was cynically transformed into a black cause of dubious merit.  And Zimmerman was forced to go into hiding to preserve his life.
Compounding those belated miscarriages of justice at the same time they demeaned the life and death of Trayvon Martin, . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=36827.)