sure, i'll say something about the Zimmerman verdict...

     Allow me to uselessly and presumptuously ramble on the basis of the scant reading I've done to date: 
     First, it's likely that both Martin and Zimmerman were defending themselves. Zimmerman set in motion a series of events that led to a confrontation in which each rightly felt that his life was in danger. This confrontation was neither inevitable, nor necessary. Right up to that fatal moment, Zimmerman could have identified himself and stated his purpose, in which case we might have had a story of a stand off that ended when police arrived to find that Martin was doing nothing wrong, and that Zimmerman was an overzealous fool. (The bulletproof vest etc are giveaways that he likely inflated not only the purpose of the Neighborhood Watch, but his role in it.) 
     Second, Martin isn't a symbol of anything, neither is Zimmerman. This horrible event doesn't tell us anything about race, gun violence, 'Stand Your Ground' laws - it tells us nothing at all about anything at all. It just happened. It was pure absurdity, abetted by idiocy. It's likely, to speculate on the basis of nothing at all, that Zimmerman is in fact guilty of some kind of criminal recklessness, but the idiot prosecutor chose to overcharge and thus lost the whole thing. So there's more stupidity, more idiocy (those are different things). 
     The death of Trevon Martin can only be used to further an agenda - whatever that may be - at the expense of the truth that it is, for all of us outside the circle of family and friends of both men, meaningless. The death of that young man, and the weight of having killed him borne by another, are without purpose, without meaning, without yield for us and our various Causes. Why did it happen? Because it happened. The reality of providence in which I firmly believe does not imply that such events are anything other than absurd acts of stupid fortuity, fortuity aided, yes, by idiocy and misapprehension, but not less but more fortuitous and thus stupid for all that. 
     The real question therefore is, Can we live in a world where things like this just happen? Can we accept moral responsibility for our free acts in such a contingent world? Zimmerman to be sure acted freely, if idiotically. That the Triune God is first and final cause of all that is, does not mitigate but rather establishes this freedom, this existential responsibility. So, rewind that night, and have Zimmerman or Martin do the least little thing differently, and the whole damned tragedy might never have happened. Once again, we see that this tells us nothing about anything other than the often blind contingency of our lives, and our moral responsibility to act accordingly, knowing that foolishly overreaching can yield terrible consequences.