Gun

We live in a world we created.

I'm sure my anger over the hoodies is misunderstood. It's not really about a dead kid. What angers me is that it had to be a black kid in order for anyone to make a stink about it. My point is not really the fact that if it had been a white kid, nobody would be wearing a hoodie. My point is that it happened at all. And then when it does, this is what we do? Put on a sweatshirt? Why? To raise awareness? Anybody out there who didn't know about racism before March 2012? Anybody?

I guess I'm just wired differently. I know I seem insensitive, but I'm not. I'm very sad that a kid can't go out, grab a box of Skittles and go back home and watch Glee without some asshole putting a smoking hole in his chest. Nobody thinks the people wearing the hoodies are insensitive, because they're just protesting. But that's all I'm doing. I'm protesting.

I'm protesting the fact that, for years, as we crept closer to this event, as one law after another was passed which made it easier to put that gun in Zimmerman's hand, nobody did anything to stop it. Nobody even "raised awareness". Where were all your hoodies then? When we decided to return to the days of the old west, where you could pretty much shoot anyone who pissed you off.

Did nobody see this coming? Really? I did. I didn't know what the kid's name would be, but I predicted it. When the "concealed carry" laws started going into effect, I suddenly had an out-of-body experience. I felt like I had been somehow transported to another planet.

But it's not. It's still Planet Earth. The world we created.

I'm not against movements or protests. I'm against flaccid, ineffectual after-the-fact campaigns like Hoodiepalooza. We were all Tweeting and texting and X-Boxing while lawmakers were handing Zimmerman the gun. We could have done something about it. If you believe wearing a hoodie can change things, you must believe that sending a message to our elected officials can, the next time they're trying to push through some asinine law like this. If we could get a message like that to go viral-- that we can see what's coming, and we can't allow it, we won't allow it-- then we won't have to impotently react, banding together in despair and confusion, to another tragedy.

We can create the kind of world that's worth living in.