{"id":22667,"date":"2013-07-22T15:52:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T19:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=22667"},"modified":"2013-07-22T15:52:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T19:52:45","slug":"trayvon-martin-could-have-been-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=22667","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 In unscheduled and unusually personal remarks,<strong> President Barack Obama<\/strong> tried Friday to explain why African-Americans were upset about last week\u2019s acquittal o<strong>f George Zimmerman<\/strong> in the shooting death of <strong>Trayvon Martin<\/strong> while lowering expectations for federal charges in the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<strong>Trayvon Martin <\/strong>could have been me 35 years ago,\u201d <strong>Pres. Obama<\/strong> told White House reporters in a surprise appearance at the daily briefing. His remarks, which lasted about 20 minutes, escalated a nationwide debate on the verdict that has prompted protests, including some that turned violent.<\/p>\n<p>A Florida jury acquitted <strong>Zimmerman <\/strong>last Saturday in <strong>Martin\u2019s <\/strong>February 26, 2012, shooting death, inciting anger among many who considered the incident racially motivated murder. <strong>Pres. Obama <\/strong>issued a written statement on Sunday, noting that the jury had spoken and urging calm and reflection. Despite some calls for him to speak about the case, the nation\u2019s first African-American president had made no further public comment until Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 In unscheduled and unusually personal remarks, President Barack Obama tried Friday to explain why African-Americans were upset about last week\u2019s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin while lowering expectations for federal charges in the case. \u201cTrayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,\u201d Pres. Obama told White [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}