Imagine.

Imagine you live in a gated community where you pay top dollar to a homeowner's association to insure a safe environment. Imagine sending your son to the store to get some candy and a drink. Imagine your son being followed, then confronted by a man who claims he has no business being in the neighborhood. Imagine the confusion on your son's face as he's told he doesn't belong in the neighborhood where his father calls home. Imagine the man attempting to "detain" your son. He fights back, breaking the man's nose and pushing him down to the ground. The man retaliates by pulling a gun. He fires.

Now, imagine your son lying there in a pool of his own blood, only feet away from your home. Imagine this same man claiming self-defense, despite ignoring warnings from the emergency dispatcher to not follow and confront your son.

Imagine this man being let free, simply because he "cooperated." Your son is dead, and the man who killed him was let free.

Put your son in the shoes of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a clean-cut kid with nary a disciplinary record and a bright future ahead of him, at least until that future was terminated by the likes of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain. Put yourself in the shoes of Trayvon's parents, who now have to fight for Zimmerman's prosecution for their son's death and hope that the media doesn't get bored with the story, consigning this travesty to relative obscurity.

Put yourself in the shoes of Trayvon's closest friends and relatives, who now have to contend with the loss of someone very special to their hearts. Imagine you're one of his teachers, one of his mentors, his closest friend.

Put yourself in the shoes of a young black male who has to worry about whether he'll lose his life by merely being a random object of some white or "hispanic" man's aggression. Imagine having to deal with yet another way for an innocent black American to lose his or her life in a country that can't seem to keep its shit together when it comes to ethnic matters.

But whatever you do, don't put yourself in the shoes of George Zimmerman, a reprobate who is more than likely being protected by the Sanford Police Department. Zimmerman was charged in 2005 for resisting arrest with violence and battery on a police officer, but those charges were dropped. He was aiming for a degree in Criminal Justice, with the possibility of becoming a cop. He wasn't a cop yet, but he sure attempted to play the part. And now a young promising man is dead because, in his words, “these assholes always get away” and he didn't want this one "getting away." He's currently in hiding, for fear of vigilante justice doing what the justice system seems reluctant to do.

Imagine having your son's death seen as no big deal, because he was more than likely a budding criminal who would have struck at some point. After all, he probably had it coming. "They" all do, according to those "enlightened" minds.

Finally, imagine you're Trayvon, just after you've been shot, wondering if your little brother's gonna be okay with not being able to bring him his favorite candy.