How too much safety has resulted in the death of Trayvon Martin...

Back in late 2,000 I read a book by William Upski Wimsatt called "No More Prisons". The theory behind the project was that we had put ourselves in artificial prisons in America, by locking all our doors to our cars, houses, and belongings; and fearing one another. This isolated cultural life had actually made us less safe and more fearful of one another.

The author advocated for people to move about freely into "dangerous" parts of town, to begin picking up hitchhikers and so on and so forth. As a way of removing our fear of strangers. He even put this idea to the test, by promoting his book in all the most dangerous cities of America, standing on street corners alone late at night. And sure enough, no harm ever came to him. Although, once he said he did get beat up; "but then again, everybody needs a good as kicking every now and then", he said.

But in general he says if you are polite and non-confrontational, you can go about safely in any city at any time in America. Such a refreshing position is greatly needed in American society today.

Just recently we had the case of Trayvon Martin. A teenager who was shot by a suspicious neighborhood watchmen. The murder was a paranoid psycho-path, who had made something like 45 calls to police over suspected incidents in the year.

We always hear so much about making our communities safe. But what about making our communities courageous? What about teaching people to have enough courage to open up to "outsiders"?