By Katie Halper • @kthalps • 12 years ago

Trayvon Martin shooting targets sold online

An anonymous person from Virginia Beach, Virginia sold “10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets” on the website GunBroker.com (the product has since been removed from the site). For $8, you could buy the item, whose description read as follows:

“Everyone knows the story of Zimmerman and Martin… Obviously we support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug. Each target is printed on thick, high quality poster paper with a matte finish! The dimensions are 12″x18″ ( The same as Darkotic Zombie Targets) This is a Ten Pack of Targets.”

The targets feature a faceless figure wearing a hoodie and carrying skittles, like Trayvon Martin was the night he was shot by George Zimmerman. The ten packs were so popular, they sold out within two days.

This sheds light onto the true motives of people who claim to defend George Zimmerman. It’s one thing to give Zimmerman the benefit of the doubt (though it’s hard for me to believe this is actually divorced from racism). But the animus against Trayvon Martin, given that he was, in fact, unarmed, is beyond unjustifiable. Why would anyone want to practice shooting a figure representing an unarmed teenager? What is the meaning and significance of this? What is it about Trayvon Martin that makes him a worthy target? What was his crime? What makes him a “thug”? Walking while being black seems to be the only answer.

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Born and raised on the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, Katie Halper is a comic, writer, blogger, satirist and filmmaker based in New York. Katie graduated from The Dalton School (where she teaches history) and Wesleyan University (where she learned that labels are for jars.) A director of Living Liberally and co-founder/performer in Laughing Liberally, Katie has performed at Town Hall, Symphony Space, The Culture Project, D.C. Comedy Festival, all five Netroots Nations, and The Nation Magazine Cruise, where she made Howard Dean laugh! and has appeared with Lizz Winstead, Markos Moulitsas, The Yes Men, Cynthia Nixon and Jim Hightower. Her writing and videos have appeared in The New York Times, Comedy Central, The Nation Magazine, Gawker, Nerve, Jezebel, the Huffington Post, Alternet and Katie has been featured in/on NY Magazine, LA Times, In These Times, Gawker,Jezebel, MSNBC, Air America, GritTV, the Alan Colmes Show, Sirius radio (which hung up on her once) and the National Review, which called Katie “cute and some what brainy.” Katie co-produced Tim Robbins’s film Embedded, (Venice Film Festival, Sundance Channel); Estela Bravo’s Free to Fly (Havana Film Festival, LA Latino Film Festival); was outreach director for The Take, Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary about Argentine workers (Toronto & Venice Film Festivals, Film Forum); co-directed New Yorkers Remember the Spanish Civil War, a video for Museum of the City of NY exhibit, and wrote/directed viral satiric videos including Jews/ Women/ Gays for McCain.

Katie is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, and New Yorker.

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