The Dream Still Lives (Despite Recent Nightmares).

Last Saturday, we reflected on the upcoming 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. We remembered how much our nation has grown since then. We also noticed what still needs to be done to achieve Dr. King's dream.

Today, the latter is becoming even more painfully obvious. For one, the usual G-O-TEA suspects continue to race-bait the already tragic shooting death of Chris Lane, the Australian student and baseball player attending a college in Oklahoma. He was allegedly gunned down by "three bored teens". Yet while Australian media have zeroed in on our dangerously violent culture and incredibly lax gun laws, right-wing media here are twisting facts and building up tension in a desperate attempt to prove "Reverse Racism!!! White people under attack!!!"

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And that's not all. Just over a month after his acquittal in the Trayvon Martin murder trial, George Zimmerman took his "victory tour" to the very factory that produced the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin. No, I'm not even kidding.

Part of what made the Zimmerman acquittal hard to take was the shooter’s utter lack of remorse for killing Martin. Even if you believed every word of his self-defense claim, it had to be hard to imagine having no regrets about the death of a teenager. Even Sean Hannity, who normally appears conscience free, asked Zimmerman if he had “regrets” about getting out of his car and following Martin, which led to their confrontation and the boy’s shooting. “It was all God’s plan, and for me to second guess it or judge it,” Zimmerman told Hannity, his voice trailing off.

That’s the kind of cluelessness that would lead a guy to tour the factory that made the gun he used to kill Martin, and to pose grinning with a star-struck factory worker like he’s Frank Sinatra visiting a local trattoria.

It’s particularly sad that Zimmerman’s visit came on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, which was commemorated Saturday by a civil rights convening that included Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s parents. The issues of racial profiling, stop and frisk and stand your ground laws are animating a new movement for racial justice, and Martin has become a symbol of the way young black men are treated at the hands of police as well as vigilantes like Zimmerman. “Trayvon Martin was my son, but he’s not just my son, he’s all of our son, and we have to fight for our children,” said Fulton told the crowd.

Yet even in the wake of this, Sybrina Fulton marched in Washington. And she reminded us of what must still be done. She reminded us of the dream that still lives, even amidst her son's tragic death.

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Despite the compoinding tragedies and the constant setbacks, the dream still lives. The dream is still here. Do we want it?


Sadly, the radical right's celebration of George Zimmerman's slaying of Trayvon Martin and distortion of Chris Lane's untimely death are clear reminders of the recent setbacks. Yet despite all this, the dream still lives. Can we finally make it a reality?

Deadly Blame Game

Yesterday, a number of local constituents gathered across the street from Rep. Joe Heck's district office to demand action on gun violence. Today, we reflect on even more saddening headlines of brutal gun violence across the nation.

Last Friday, Chris Lane was shot dead "for fun". He was an Australian national and budding baseball star studying at Oklahoma's East Central University. His untimely death sparked shock and outrage in both countries, but Australians have particularly noticed a dangerous aspect of American culture that contributed to Chris Lane's death.

Frank FitzGerald, who was the principal at St Bernard's while Mr Lane was a student, said Mr Lane had been an integral part of the school leadership. He said the violence of Mr Lane's death made it particularly difficult to bear.

"I think the rest of the countries around the world just look at that country and shake their head," Mr FitzGerald said.

"How many tragedies do they have and Chris is just one of many.

"When you hear of the ones in schools where they have massacres, I cannot conceive of what that is to deal with. We had a number of tragedies over the years at St Bernard's and it cuts right through."

But of course on this side of the Pacific Ocean, the usual G-O-TEA suspects have been quick to pile on the race baiting. They've even gone on bizarre rants over fried chicken and vegetables! After all, they're still trying to spin away the brutal death of Trayvon Martin. And of course, they have to find something to divert attention from the root cause of both their deaths, along with the untimely deaths of many more people in this nation.

Also this week, we saw another school shooting. This time, it was in Decatur, Georgia. Yet this time, there were no deaths.

How did that happen? Antoinette Tuff was able to talk down the shooter. And she was able to talk him down without using a gun. So of course, this has caused many G-O-TEA heads to explode.

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Tuff is, of course, the bookkeeper at Ronald McNair Discovery Learning Center in Decatur, Ga., whose work talking shooter Michael Brandon Hill into surrendering to police Tuesday was captured live on a stunning 911 tape that’s gone viral. The fascination at the heart of Tuff’s tale, the reason it’s riveting, is the way she used compassion and empathy to disarm a mentally ill man intent on killing. “Was the potential there to have another Sandy Hook? Absolutely,” the local police chief told reporters as he praised Tuff.

In this story, the only thing that stopped a bad guy with a gun was a good woman with a heart. Or to entirely rewrite Wayne LaPierre’s dumb Manichaean NRA propaganda: The only thing that stopped an emotionally damaged, despairing and unloved young man with 500 rounds of ammunition was a compassionate woman sharing her own story of damage and despair, and telling him she loved him.

Oh, and then there’s this: As we try to recover from the unnecessarily polarized aftermath of the Trayvon Martin killing and George Zimmerman’s acquittal, it’s worth noting that Tuff is a black woman who helped save a young white man from harm at the hands of police. Of course, the race-baiters at Fox News, who were so agitated about the crimes of young black men a few weeks ago, have hardly rushed to emphasize that a young white man opened fire at a predominantly black school – let alone that he was helped to save his own life by an African-American woman (for example, check out how they approach these facts here).

But of course, the usual G-O-TEA suspects have rushed to race-bait in the Chris Lane case. And of course, they continue to refuse to address the root cause of his death, the near miss at Antoinette Tuff's school, the police shootout here in Henderson that Desert Beacon discussed this morning. After all, it's easier to play deadly blame games than to get Congress to actually do something to save lives.