NASW-NJ Blog

President Obama, in commenting on the death of Trayvon Martin, the black teenager fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, said:
“If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.”

With this in mind, I would like to cite a comment made by NASW member Phillipe Copeland, a social worker and adjunct professor at Simmons College and Boston University. The article in which Copeland was quoted is entitled: "Trayvon Martin Could Have Been One of My Kids."

Copeland said: "We are incredibly vulnerable to violence in all its forms... the state-sanctioned violence of stop-and-frisk...'trigger-happy policin',' as Marvin Gaye once sang...and the psychological violence of white denial have all contributed to the problem. You begin to feel that you can never really be safe anywhere."

I invite you to share your thoughts on the Trayvon Martin incident. Is there a place for self-defense gun laws in our society? What role did race and profiling play in this shooting? And what, if anything, do you think social workers can do to effect change?