InjusticeThe officer who shot Khalil was written off with not so much as a slap on the wrist during the first grand jury trial. He shot at Khalil after the teen had simply opened his car door to check on his friend, which wouldn't have happened if Khalil had been white. The very first question the investigators asked Starr was if Khalil had been involved with drugs, and immediately she knew that this would not be unbiased or fair at all.
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speaking upIn the beginning, Starr is reluctant to speak out on Khalil's murder. She doesn't even want her friends at school to know that she was involved with him at all. Throughout the book, she learns that the most powerful weapon she has is her words. After understanding this, she goes on national television and speaks out about his death.
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community
The neighborhood of Garden Heights had been torn apart due to rival gangs causing mayhem for a long time. There had been cases of people getting jumped in the streets, and even a death by drive-by. After Khalil's death, things only got worse, until the jury trial. The failure to indict the officer at fault brought the neighborhood together. The two rival gangs that had gone to the length of violence and murder then stood together without so much as a verbal argument, because they understood that they had a common enemy: the lack of justice.