Gutwrenching, exhausting, crazy 72 hours in america. Its been hard to wrap your mind and your heart around everything thats happened. First we were confronted with a dhiling image of a man in baton rouge, louisiana, named alton sterling being killed by police. Alton sterling was a father of five. The next day in falcon heights, minnesota, a man named Philando Castile was shot dead by an officer during a traffic stop. His girlfriend, whose 4yearold daughter was in the back seat, broadcast the aftermath live on facebook. The backtoback killings of black men at the hands of Law Enforcement were so disturbing that president obama, who had just arrived in poland for a nato summit, made a lengthy statement to the press shortly after landing, urging us as a country to, quote, do better. Last night, thousands of black lives matter and other protesters gathered in Peaceful Demonstrations in cities across the country. And then during one of those peaceful protests in dallas, just 24 hours ago, a
we rallied for justice in every state and on a host of issues. in florida it was for trayvon mart martin, an unarmed man who was gunned down. you know, when trayvon martin was first shot, i said that this could have been my son. another way of saying that is trayvon martin could have been me 35 years ago. while the verdict was disappointing, it inspired a move against the unjust policy of stand your ground. including from trayvon s mother sybrina fulton who has become a
that young man, because we wouldn t be. this is the if president obama can say, trayvon martin could have been me, this is the point that, in fact, trayvon martin could i am not trayvon martin if i am in another kind of body. right, george zimmerman could have been me or a lot of other white folks. and i want to add to this fact, because it has deep historical roots. the president makes reference in this speech to statistically, trayvon martin was more likely to be killed by a peer than by george zimmerman, which is his way of sort of grounding it in a way so that he doesn t go too far off the reservation. but the larger history that this relies upon is essentially that statistically, trayvon s not likely to be the president. so statistically, we should treat trayvon like the potential suspect that he is, rather than him being like the president. and essentially, the violence of the racial quantification of black life. this way in which we essentially say, we don t have to us
understand where these stories fit in. i want to listen to the president talking about the stand your ground laws for just a second and then ask you about one part of it. and for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like the stand your ground laws, i just ask people to consider, if trayvon martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? and do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting mr. zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened? i m going to ask you about that justification in just one moment. but we do now have, joining us from jacksonville, florida, ron davis, jordan s father, and his family s attorney, john phillips. mr. davis, i want to start with you, because i assume that the zimmerman verdict is something that is especially impactful for
but the power is some will listen and hear something. so when we talk about trayvon martin or jordan davis or marissa alexander or sean bell, every one of them is is story. some of those trials may be resolved on evidentiary issues, that don t go directly to systemic issues, but you stack up the stories and you get statistics. what the president did was insert himself in those statistics. when he talks about being profiled as a black man, before he was in the senate, he s talking as a black man who was a harvard law educated university of chicago professor, published author married, father of two. all of that, upstanding member of the community. he s talking about having a level of success and being profiled, which doesn t even speak to people like trayvon mart martin, who are systematically disappeared at every step of the process. that s why you go, when you talk about a teachable moment, it s more than a teachable moment, it is a larger chance to actually