Trayvon Martin's Mother Pens Open Letter To Family Of Michael Brown
The mother of Trayvon Martin, the teen killed by a neighborhood watchman in Florida in 2012, has penned a letter to the family of Michael Brown, another teen fatally shot by a police officer in Missouri this month.
In the letter, Sybrina Fulton discusses racial tension and "senseless gun violence." The open letter was published in TIME on Tuesday.
"I hate that you and your family must join this exclusive yet growing group of parents and relatives who have lost loved ones to senseless gun violence," Fulton writes. "Our children are our future so whenever any of our children — black, white, brown, yellow, or red — are taken from us unnecessarily, it causes a never-ending pain that is unlike anything I could have imagined experiencing."
Fulton goes on to encourage the Brown family to practice "intelligent advocacy" when seeking justice for the death of their son. "Know this: neither of their lives shall be in vain," she continues. "Feeling us means feeling our pain; imagining our plight as parents of slain children. We will no longer be ignored. We will bond, continue our fights for justice, and make them remember our children in an appropriate light."
Protesters, a small minority of which have been violent, have taken to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri this past week to demand justice for Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who was fatally shot by a police officer on August 9 while the officer responded to a robbery at a convenience store. While police argue that there was a scuffle between Brown and the cop, witnesses argue that Brown was surrendering when he was fatally shot six times from the front.
Racial tensions in Ferguson have grown strong since Brown's death, as the community is 70 percent black and the local police force is completely white. Many have compared Brown's recent death to the death of teenager Trayvon Martin, who was killed in a suburban suburb by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, while he walked home from a convenience store. Both Brown and Martin were unarmed when they were fatally shot.
