Black lives matter to Hillary Clinton

Family photo

Throughout her long career in public service, Hillary Clinton has stood for social justice for all people. She continued to live out those values on Monday when she met with the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, young blacks who have recently lost their lives through acts of violence.

Alana Horowitz Satlin, assignment editor at the Huffington Post has the story:

Hillary Clinton held a private meeting in Chicago on Monday with the families of prominent victims of recent gun violence.

Hillary tweeted: Hillary Clinton ✔ @HillaryClinton

Grateful to spend time today with mothers who have lost a child to violence and turned their grief into a national call to action. -H

6:05 PM - 2 Nov 2015

The mothers of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice were all present at the meeting with the former secretary of state.

The women discussed racial inequality, criminal justice reform, and gun control. Clinton's first pro-gun control ad debuts on Tuesday. 

"She is a mother and she is a woman and I felt she understood where we were coming from," said Samaria Rice told CNN. "It doesn't matter what color we are, I felt that she really understand where we are coming from."

Rice's son, Tamir, was the 12-year-old Ohio boy fatally shot by police last year for wielding what later turned out to be a BB gun. Brown, 18, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson last year in Ferguson, Missouri, after a scuffle. In 2012, Martin, 17, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a Florida neighbor of his father's fiancee, for appearing "suspicious." Davis, also 17, was shot and killed after an argument over loud music with Florida resident Michael David Dunn. 

Dunn was the only shooter of the four who was convicted of a crime.

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George Zimmerman: guilty until proven innocent

Trayvon Martin

George Zimmeran

Americans like to boast that a person is innocent until proven guilty. But forget that when an American citizen abroad is a terrorist suspect. Then it’s okay to program a Predator drone to assassinate said suspect.

Here at home, the media has preemptively convicted George Zimmerman of the murder of Trayvon Martin, and one has to wonder how the justice system can come up with an unbiased jury in this case.

(Keep in mind that I’ve consistently supported stricter gun control laws, and I believe Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law guarantees an increase in violence in that state’s culture.)

In the meantime, Patrik Johnson, staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor, offers another  look at George Zimmerman:

George Zimmerman, charged with the murder of teenager Trayvon Martin, stood up for the downtrodden and wanted to become a magistrate judge to help society. How does this square with depictions of him as a racist vigilante?

The depictions of George Zimmerman that have emerged since he killed Trayvon Martin in the Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26 have trended mostly around suspicions that he is a racist vigilante, a product of a “shoot first” mentality.

But as more information about Mr. Zimmerman’s past surfaces, a contrasting picture is emerging that  suggests his values may also align closely with those of social justice activists who have sought his arrest and prosecution for murder.

Suggestions by his parents that their son worked to protect society’s have-nots raise a question: Is Zimmerman, a registered Democrat of mixed ethnicity who views himself as a Hispanic, actually a different breed of citizen altogether: a social justice activist with a gun?

RECOMMENDED: How 5 young black men see the Trayvon Martin case

At a bond hearing Friday, Zimmerman’s Hispanic mother, Gladys Zimmerman, disagreed with prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda’s suggestion that a 2005 arrest for assaulting a police officer showed a violent streak in the married 28-year-old, who stands accused by the state of second degree murder

Instead, she said it fit his personality in another way: His zeal to intervene to protect a friend who was being pushed up against a wall by men who turned out to be two plain-clothes law enforcement officers. (A first time offender, Zimmerman escaped a conviction by agreeing to a judge’s request that he take an anger management course.)

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