Bastille Day for Trayvon Martin

I wonder if it's entirely coincidental that our Day of Vigil for Trayvon Martin -- today, July 14 -- is also Bastille Day in France, the day during the French Revolution when the people stormed the Bastille prison and released the prisoners.

France had been a conservative monarchy where the people at the top controlled everything and the people at the bottom starved. Now it is a liberal democracy where the people at the top control everything and the people at the bottom do not, by and large, starve. This is progress.

In 1955, a young black man named Emmett Till was beaten and shot to death in Mississippi. His crime was that he may or may not have whistled at a white woman.

In 2012, a young black man named Trayvon Martin was shot to death in Florida. His crime was that he refused to be intimidated by a white man. Trayvon stood up for himself.

And now I think we should all stand up for Trayvon Martin, and keep standing up until it is no longer open season on young black men in America.