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Trayvon Martin would have been celebrating his 29th birthday this week and his passing still resonates with so many Black Americans.

Trayvon Martin never asked to be the face of a movement; he never asked to be a martyr. But, his untimely death has had a lasting impact on our discussions about systemic racism and gun violence. Scholarships were created in his name, laws were scrutinized in his honor and documentaries were created to tell his story. Trayvon Martins legacy still lives on through the many who work hard to keep his name alive. This starts with his mother, Sybrina Fulton, who also did not ask to become the mother of a movement.

She recently took to social media to keep his name in the minds of all his supporters by posting a birthday message to her late son.

Happy Heavenly Birthday to my Sun/Sonshine just know I do this all for you, wrote Fulton. You will forever be a part of my heart & even the death of you has not separated my LOVE for you,Mommy.

The family also participated in the 12th annual Trayvon Martin Peace Walk and Talk last weekend in Miami Gardens to commemorate his life and promote peace and dialogue in his memory.

Its not just Trayvon Martins family that is working diligently to keep his legacy alive.

Filmmaker, Ava DuVernay, is releasing a new film called Origin, which, according to Business Insider, is based on Isabel Wilkersons bestselling 2020 nonfiction book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.The film, which will tackle themes centered around the social hierarchy of racism in America, will open with a scene that begins on the last night of Trayvon Martins life in 2012.

DuVernay told Business Insider that she decided to start the film this way to humanize Martin in a way that films hadnt in the past.

It opens on him having a very carefree conversation with his homegirl on the phone, and going in to buy candy, and being very deliberate with counting out change for the cashier, and defending himself against the sprinkles happening outside in the rain by putting up his hoodie, DuVernay told BI. You dont see anything that happens to him until another 20 minutes in the film.

She continued, By speaking to what was shown, you humanize him. That was the goal, and he deserves that.

Twelve years after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, Stand Your Ground laws continue to be a point of contention among Martins supporters.

In 2022, the Northwest Florida Daily News published a reportabout Floridas Stand Your Ground laws enduring nature despite ongoing disparities in the application of the defense.

The January 2022 essay by Kami Chavis for the Duke Center for Firearms Law observed that in Florida, in more than half of the states Stand Your Ground cases, the shooter could have deescalated but didnt. Stand Your Ground laws differ from traditional self-defense in part because the shooter does not have to avoid confrontation.

At the same time, Black defendants accused of crimes do not enjoy the same protections under these laws as similarly situated white defendants, read the essay. (Read the full essay here).

Trayvon Martins birthday is a day to celebrate his life and also a day to remember his name. Its up to us to make sure his legacy lives on and actual change is made in his honor.

SEE ALSO:

Years After Trayvon Martins Killing, Stand Your Ground Disparities Persist

Formerly Incarcerated People In Tennessee Must Be Able To Buy A Gun To Vote

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Celebrating Trayvon Martin: How His Legacy Continues To Thrive - NewsOne

Mary L. Bowman

Mary L. Bowman, 91, of Mill Hall passed away Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023 with her daughters by her side.

Mary was the daughter of the late John and Marjorie (Fravel) Zimmerman and was raised in Clintondale by her uncle and aunt, Ernest and Eleanor Emert.

In 1947, Mary married Frederick S. Bowman who preceded her in death in 1976.

Mary worked at Sylvania, Clinton Paper, Corning Glass Works and as a caregiver for many years.

She enjoyed dancing, camping, fishing in Canada and most importantly, family time. She loved her family and living life to the fullest. Mary enjoyed watching her daughters play softball and grandson and great grandson race cars. She was their #1 fan!

She is survived by her three daughters, Marge Bowman of Milesburg, Gail (Terry) Fourney of Mill Hall and Gay (Jamie) Kline of Mill Hall; a brother, George Zimmerman of Lamar; four grandchildren, Denny (Miriah) Fourney, Ashley (Kevin) Baier, Brandy (Chris) Yoder and Mary Jo (Tim) Bittner; four great grandchildren, Timmy, Layla, Mason and Deacon; and her adopted daughter, Diane Shawley.

In addition to her husband, she was also preceded in death by a son, Freddy in 1995, and her brothers, Charles and John Zimmerman.

Mary was a resident at Haven Place since 2016. The family would like to send a special thank you to the doctors, all of her nurses and all of the specialized departments for the professionalism, kindness, love and support shown to our Mother throughout the years. You have a special place in our hearts.

Services will be private at the convenience of her family.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions in Marys name may be made to UPMC Foundation Second Floor, c/o Donald G. Walker Funeral Home, Inc., 231 High St., Flemington, PA 17745, to be used in the Dementia Unit at Haven Place.

Online condolences may be given by visiting http://www.donaldwalkerfuneralhome.com

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Mary L. Bowman | News, Sports, Jobs - The Express - Lock Haven Express

The nave and mis-guided followers of the woke/progressive ideology are extremely dangerous because their simplistic views influence millions when their voices are amplified by social media and the mainstream press. While the term useful idiots did not originate with Lenin as many believe, it has been used most often about those fools who backed Communism without any understanding of what it really entailed. Today Communism has been largely discredited but the current ideology on the left is just as dangerous and it threatens all of us in many ways. The October 7 horrific attack in Israel and the support Hamas got is only the latest and most tragic example.

Massacre of the innocents

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists killed 1,400 Israelis and took over 200 to be held as hostages in Gaza. They decapitated babies, raped girls and women, tied up innocents in their homes and burned them alive. The victims ranged from infants to elderly Holocaust survivors. Relative to the size of Israel, the number was equivalent to 50,000 in the United States, far worse than 9/11. The attack was universally condemned by world leaders in Western democracies and the media.

But it didnt last long. Even before the victims had been buried, pro-Hamas demonstrations started around the world and most media started to talk about the context and justifying the unspeakable evil of the terrorists who were glorified by being called militants. Israel was urged to use restraint and to follow international law even though Israel is the most moral country in the world and the Hamas terrorists committed and continue to commit unspeakable war crimes.

How can so many supposedly educated students, including at top universities, be so blind as to not see pure evil. How can the supposedly professional media fall for the propaganda of Hamas and their supporters? A hospital in Gaza is hit by an explosion and the media immediately listen to Hamas and say it was an Israeli air strike. Within a couple of hours Israel provides incontestable proof that the explosion was from an Islamic Jihad mis-fired rocket. And still some media do not correct their erroneous reporting.How did we get to this point?

I am not going to talk about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Others have covered this subject far better than I can. Suffice to say that Hamas is clearly as bad and evil as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. They must be destroyed and Israel should be given free rein to do so, not only for the sake of its own people but to protect all Western democracies since Hamas seeks to kill all infidels.

To understand why so many people, march for Hamas and get support from an uncritical media who are now calling for a ceasefire and restraint by Israel, it is useful to examine other examples of the woke, progressive ideology.

Black Lives Matter/Defund the police

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) slogan and groups started in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a white man, in the shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin. The movement grew following other high-profile shootings of blacks by police. It really took off in 2020 after the videotaped murder of George Floyd. At the same time a Defund the Police movement also took off. This was a simplistic solution to a real problem. It is true that more blacks are killed by police than whites but black crime against other blacks is far, far greater than blacks being killed by police.

The defund the police movement led to less police and the demoralization of many of them. Obviously, that led to far more crime against all races, but especially against blacks. In addition, many woke cities and states started releasing people charged with crimes under a certain dollar amount. This led to flash mobs invading and ransacking stores especially in downtown areas where many blacks and poor people live. So, many of the stores simply closed with the losers being those living in those areas, the very same people that the simplistic woke people wanted to help.

Make no mistake, discrimination against blacks especially by some police (a small minority) is a real problem. From my 6 years on Montreals Public Security Commission, I know the police are aware of the problem and addressing it. And this was before the more recent publicity about the issue. However, mobs protesting, burning and looting stores and calls for defunding the police do not help.

Open borders

The woke feel sorry for anyone they deem to be oppressed or poor so they want open borders in the south of the United States. As a result, since Joe Biden was elected at least 7 million undocumented immigrants have come over. No one knows who they are or where they are. However, some who have been caught are sex traffickers, drug dealers, criminals and almost certainly some are terrorists just waiting for the right moment to strike. Also, a number come from China. Why would someone from China come through the southern US border? There are easier ways to come in but then they would be documented. Where did they get the money for such a long journey. I would not be surprised if, at least some, are sleeper agents for the Chinese government. Open borders are a ticking time bomb and an insane policy but that is what the useful woke fools want.

Sanctuary Cities

Border states complained bitterly about all the illegal aliens flooding their areas and costing them a fortune, increasing crime, homelessness, etc. So, the ever so woke cities and states, virtue-signaling, declared themselves to be Sanctuary Cities/States and proclaimed that all were welcome. However, as soon as the border states started busing the illegals to Washington, DC, Marthas Vineyard, New York City and so on, the outcry was immediate. We have no facilities; we cant handle all these homeless people; bussing these people is inhumane, etc. Now, suddenly the Biden administration is working on the border wall and increasing border patrol agents. I am afraid it is too little, too late.

The Palestinians

The simplistic woke fools see that the Palestinians are poor and suffering. So, they are quick to believe the nonsense that it is the fault of Israel. They say Israel is occupying Gaza when the truth is Israel left Gaza and forced the Israeli settlers to leave in September, 2005, 18 years ago. When given that fact, they say Israel treats Gaza like an open-air prison. Strange, a prison with an open door to Egypt in the south and no guards. Further, until October 7, Israel generously and humanely provided water, electricity and all kinds of aid to flow in from Israel. Why? Because Hamas who control Gaza, did not spend the millions that they receive each year to help their people. Instead, they built 300 miles of tunnels, and missiles. They built rocket launchers under hospitals and schools so they could use their people as human shields. I could go on but the point of all the examples that I have given is that the liberal, woke, progressives are shallow thinkers who are very good at protesting but these useful fools are strengthening terrorists, and helping those who wish to destroy Western democracies.

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The 'useful idiots' who cannot understand total evil - The Suburban Newspaper

Recently, there has been a spate of horrific murders.

The killers, whether committing mass shootings or single homicides, are hard to stereotype.

They can be clearly either mentally ill or simply innately evil. They can kill for revenge, for ideological purposes, out of hatred, for notoriety or for no known reason at all.

They are probably left-wing and right-wing, white, Black, and brown, young, and old. While their weapons of choice are semi-automatic rifles, there are plenty of killers who favor handguns and even knives.

Unfortunately, these tragedies have increasingly become politicized.

Yet our media and politicians do not apply a common standard of reporting about either the victims, the killers, or the apparent motives and circumstances of the violence.

Instead, each horror is quickly analyzed for its political usefulness. Then its details are selectively downplayed or emphasized, depending upon the political agenda at work.

A sad example was the terrible murder spree at the private Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. A transgender male shot and killed six people, including three 9-year-old children.

Almost immediately, three media narratives emerged.

One, semi-automatic weapons, not the killer Audrey Hale, were mostly responsible for the massacre.

Two, the shooters transgender identity profile played no role in the killing whatsoever.

Three, the public had no need to know of the contents of the shooters manifesto.

Why?

The media and authorities apparently assumed Hales written rantings tried to justify the murders because of Christianitys supposed disapproval of transgenderism.

That censored reaction to the Tennessee shooting was quite different from another mass murder committed nearly six weeks later in Allen, Texas, by a former security guard Mauricio Garcia.

Within minutes of the identification of the shooter, the media blared that Garcia wore pro-Nazi insignia and was thus a white supremacist.

Apparently that narrative was deemed useful to promote the idea of white supremacist terrorists using their semi-automatic assault weapons to kill for right-wing agendas.

Yet second-generation Hispanic immigrants, whose parents do not speak English, are not likely white supremacists.

The strained effort to make violent people of color into white right-wing killers is reminiscent of Trayvon Martins death in 2012.

Then the media reinvented the shooter, half-Peruvian George Zimmerman, into a white Hispanic. He was transformed into a right-wing vigilante and racist who supposedly hunted down an innocent Black teenager.

The media did not wish to portray Martins death as a fight between a Hispanic and Black teen. Instead, it tried to refashion the shooting as systemic racism to the point of doctoring the 911 tape and photoshopping Zimmermans police photo to fit its false narratives.

Recently, an African American man named Deion Patterson lethally shot one and wounded four others in an Atlanta medical facility waiting room. His own politics, race, and type of weapon were apparently of little interest. So he was simply described as suffering from mental illness.

The media also did not wish to sensationalize either the profile or circumstances of another contemporaneous mass shooter Francisco Oropeza. He executed five of his neighbors, including a young boy and two women.

Only later did we learn that Oropeza was in fact an immigrant in the country illegally who had been deported four times previously and returned each time through an open border.

Most recently, outrage grew over the homicide of Jordan Neely, a homeless man who frequented the subway and often threatened and occasionally attacked bystanders.

When a would-be good Samaritan and ex-Marine determined Neelys latest threats to passengers were serious, he subdued him with a chokehold. Tragically, Neely died while being restrained.

A media circus followed. Neely was Black. The former Marine who held him down was white. So activists and the media immediately cited the death as yet more proof of systemic racism.

The public was lectured that Neely was a talented impersonator, who did professional street imitations of Michael Jackson.

The violent death of his mother, we were told, had traumatized him.

Released subway videos showed him on the floor of the subway, thrashing about while the white Marine held him in a headlock.

Protests and demands for a murder indictment followed.

Then later the inevitable skipped details trickled out, despite, not because of, media coverage.

Neely had been arrested 42 times, including for lewd conduct, with three convictions for violent assaults.

His forte was brutally punching random victims in the face, including a 67-year-old woman, and a 68-year-old Hispanic male.

The news stories also neglected to mention that a Black passenger helped subdue Neely.

The public learned there might be other, as yet unreleased, videos of Neely earlier threatening commuters.

Death is traumatic enough, without searching for ways to gain political traction from it.

It is eerie how each tragedy prompts a desperate effort to spin narratives of a racist America, where only right-wing killers and vigilantes prey on marginalized people of color and those who are transgender.

Once these fables become facts, then the media runs with their fables.

(Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.)

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Weaponizing death _- Commentary | Government/Opinion - City-sentinel

Saving lives is not a partisan issue. It cant be, when our nations gun violence epidemic touches every community.

Gabby Giffords

May 5, 2023Updated: May 5, 2023 9:17p.m.

Upper left: Diana Velazquez Alvarado, a victim of the Cleveland, Texas shooting. Bottom left: Julisa Molina Rivera, a victim of the Cleveland, Texas shooting. Upper right: Jonathan Casarez, a victim of the Cleveland, Texas shooting. Bottom right: Payton Washington, one of two women wounded by a man in a Texas supermarket parking lot after one of them said she mistakenly got into his car thinking it was her own. Middle: Daniel Enrique Lazo Guzman and Sonia Argentina Guzman Taibot, victims of the Cleveland, Texas shooting.

In Cleveland, Sonia Argentina Gzman Taibot, Diana Velzquez Alvarado, Obdulia Julisa Molina Rivera, Jos Jonathan Csarez and 9-year-old Daniel Enrique Lazo Guzmn were shot to death. InKansas City, Mo., Ralph Yarl is recovering from a gunshot to the head. In upstate New York, Kaylin Gillis is dead. In the Texas Hill Country, Payton Washington was recently released from the ICU. All because a few strangers thought their unjustified fear or annoyance was greater than these peoples right to live.Their lives were taken for the simple act of asking a neighbor to be quiet at night, for knocking on the wrong door, for mistakenly identifying a car. Countless more lives were ripped apart all in the span of a couple of weeks.Im furious on behalf of the victims and their families. Im especially furious with the gun lobby for pushing this dangerous shoot first, ask questions later mentality for decades, both through its culture of illogical fear, gun rights absolutism and deification of violent vigilantes such as Kyle Rittenhouse. The gun industry wants Americans to feel constantly under siege because, well, its good for business.How did we get here? It wasnt by accident it was by design. Over the past 25 years, the gun lobby has systematically crafted this dystopian version of America by stoking fear and passing laws that encourage violence, including stand your ground laws in 30 states. A recent report by Giffords Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund found that these laws create more violence by allowing people to use deadly force in public, even when they could easily de-escalate a situation.

Stand your ground laws dont allow people to shoot someone simply for a perceived insult, for ringing a doorbell or for turning down their driveway. But they do create a culture where people feel emboldened to use deadly force, and racist biases can turn deadly in the blink of an eye.

These recent preventable tragedies are getting attention, as they should, in part because of their proximity to one another. But the dangerous consequences of the gun lobbys promotion of preemptive violence are not new.After George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed Black teen Trayvon Martin in 2012, he was acquitted in a trial where his lawyers claimed self-defense. In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was killed by armed vigilantes who referenced their states stand your ground lawas justification for hunting down a Black man out jogging. In 2021, Rittenhouse was acquitted after killing two people at a Black Lives Matter protest, for which he claimed self-defense.I often say we dont want our country to become the Wild West, where disagreements that turn into shootouts are the norm. The reality, however, is even worse: Weve become a country where children are shot for no reason at all.Combining NRA fearmongering with permitless carry and stand your ground laws which the American Bar Association called a low-cost license to kill in a country where there are more guns than people is a recipe for disaster. A recent Florida road rage incident led to two men shooting each others daughters, with the first man who fired a shot ruled as having used justified force.

Race and racism often play a role in whether an attack is viewed as justified. A study that looked at FBI homicide data from 2005 to 2010 found a 281 percent higher chance that a homicide will be ruled justified if the killer is white and the victim is Black than if both are white. An analysis in Florida found that a conviction is twice as likely when the victims in a stand your ground case are white.It shouldnt need to be said, but killing people for a neighborly request or for knocking on your door is not what freedom looks like. Worshiping Zimmerman and Rittenhouse as right-wing heroes is not tough or patriotic. And allowing people to shoot first and ask questions later is not a world Americans want to live in.Saving lives is not a partisan issue. It cant be, when our nations gun violence epidemic touches every community. It doesnt matter if someone is a Republican or a Democrat parents want to send their kids to school or outside to play without worrying about a gun ripping their child away from them.

My heart broke watching family members of children massacred last year in Uvalde beg lawmakers to pass House Bill 2744, an important new bill to stop teenagers from purchasing the gun that killed their beautiful children. Their voices were not those of either political party, but the voices of parents and siblings fighting to save even more families from feeling their pain and grief.The America I know and love is full of kind, caring, generous people who love their families and enjoy spending time with friends. They give to charity, worship and are always willing to lend a helping hand to those in need. I cannot stand by and watch as cynical gun industry marketers portray my country as a place where unknown danger lurks around each corner. The vast majority of Americans gun owners and non-gun owners alike agree. We must not allow the gun industry to hijack our culture and corrupt the American way of life.

Gabby Giffords, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was shot in the head in 2011 during an attempted assassination. Shes the founder of Giffords, an organization that fights to reduce gun violence.

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Giffords: Cleveland, other shootings show the gun industry's ... - Houston Chronicle