I Won't Say It Isn't Easy to Hate. Our Million Good Wishes for Trayvon Martin.

painting by Anthony B. Lee, Memphis Tennessee*

I won't say it isn't easy to hate. I won't say that hatred is not some part of the evolutionary playbook, because it is there, here,  making itself available.

I won't say the "fuck you George Zimmerman" and similar I have heard over the past twelve hours aren't a lot more real and comforting than the less felt, more intellectual explanations I've balked at, explanations of Florida or racism in American.

And I won't say we need any more lessons about racism and hatred.  I sure won't say that the point-blank homicidal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was anything other than the Klan in a not-so-new guise, in action.

I won't say I got all the comfort I need today when I went to church BECAUSE of the verdict, because I needed help.

I won't say I don't worry for every Black teenage boy, every Black man, every male-of-color in the United States, because I do and I see no end to the reasons for my concern. 

I won't say that in a week when I'm having fun with friends or reading a book at a park or grumbling about how I loath working, I will not have moved on in my life. I'm alive.

But I do know I won't forget. After Katrina my niece said, "Well, and now everyone is going to forget."  I knew she was wrong but that she wouldn't hear it from me. People haven't forgotten. The government abandoned abandons and will abandon but New Orleans and Katrina? Remembered.

I've given up my interpretive belief in an afterlife. As an artist I used the solace of metaphor and image. We might be lucky to meld with a star, be bright and unconscious, but that's it.

I won't say more.  I don't have more to say.  I still believe in prayer.  I still believe there is some spirit of Trayvon Martin and that the spirit of Trayvon Martin feels our million good wishes. 

Good wishes, Trayvon.  Fuck you, Zimmerman.

Painting url: Go, Memphis