Blood Money In America: The $250,000 Gun That Killed Trayvon Martin

In A Country Built On The Bones Of The Oppressed And Watered With The Blood Of Black Children, It Is No Surprise—But Still A Horror—That George Zimmerman, The Man Who Murdered 17-Year-Old Trayvon Martin, Was Able To Auction Off The Very Weapon Used To Take That Child’s Life For $250,000.

Let’s Call It What It Is: Blood Money.

Let’s Remember Who Trayvon Martin Was: A Black Child, Unarmed, Walking Home From The Store With A Bag Of Skittles And A Can Of Arizona Iced Tea.

And Let’s Remember Who George Zimmerman Is: A Vigilante Emboldened By A Racist System, Armed Not Just With A Pistol But With The Full Weight Of White Supremacy Behind Him.

Trayvon Was Not A Criminal. He Was Not A Threat. He Was A Boy Coming Home.

But In America, Blackness Alone Is Often Treated As A Crime Punishable By Death.

Zimmerman, After Stalking Trayvon Through A Gated Community And Ignoring Police Dispatchers’ Advice To Stay Put, Confronted The Boy And Pulled The Trigger. In A Truly Twisted Miscarriage Of Justice, Zimmerman Walked Free—Shielded By Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law, A Law That Only Seems To Stand When It’s Protecting The White And The Armed.

Years Later, Zimmerman Would List The Gun He Used To Kill Trayvon As A “Piece Of American History.”

Let’s Be Clear: This Was Not A Sale—It Was A Public Celebration Of White Violence.

It Was Not A Collector’s Purchase—It Was The Buying And Selling Of Black Death.

Fred Hampton Once Said, “You Can Jail A Revolutionary, But You Can’t Jail The Revolution.” But What We Are Seeing Now Is Not Just A Jailing—It’s A Profiting Off Of Our Pain.

Malcolm X Warned Us: “That’s Not A Chip On My Shoulder. That’s Your Foot On My Neck.”

And Zimmerman’s Auction Is Just Another Foot, Another Knee, Another Weight Crushing Down On The Dignity Of Black Life.

This Isn’t Just About Zimmerman. It’s About A System That Creates Men Like Zimmerman.

It’s About A Culture That Once Demonized Carmelo Anthony For Merely Defending Himself, Framing Black Resistance As Criminal While Treating White Aggression As Noble.

It’s About A Nation That Values White Safety, Contentedness, And Fragility Over The Lives Of Black Children.

Trayvon Should Be Alive Today. He Should Be 29, Maybe In School, Maybe At Work, Maybe Starting A Family. But He’s Not. And Instead Of Mourning That Fact, America Lets His Killer Cash In On His Death.

If You Want To Understand How Deeply Sick This Country Is, Don’t Look At Zimmerman.

Look At The People Who Placed The Bids.

Let Them Hear Us: Trayvon Martin Was A Child.

A Black Child.

An Innocent Child.

And No Amount Of Money Can Ever Justify His Murder.

We Owe Him More Than Memory. We Owe Him Justice.

And Justice Means Destroying The Systems That Let This Happen In The First Place.

Not Just Zimmerman’s Freedom.

Not Just His Gun.

But The Whole Damn System That Sees Our Lives As Expendable And Our Deaths As Profit.