Trayvon Martin

[Jerky]

That video is tearing my heart out. God damn that jury...

[David]

i think zimmerman was right
us fat white mexicans have to stick together
you pick the one that looks like you no matter what
aint that how it works?

[alwyn]

no justice.

[Nordic]

So weird.

Reading the comments at this story:

http://gawker.com/the-zimmerman-jury-to ... -770650992

And some commenters going nuts insisting "Zimmerman wasn't white!" Oh really? Well he sure as hell isn't black.

Other commenters saying that people are celebrating, setting off fireworks. Celebrating racism.

It is now legal to hung black kids in Florida.

I actually did not expect this. Even though it's the US. Even though it's Florida.

I have not followed any of the court case, but I can only assume that the prosecution was completely incompetent.

[Laodicean]

[justdrew]

well, any physical altercation is now grounds for the use of lethal force. ANY fight, is now a fight to the death. You have to kill the other one before they kill you.

Teach your children and make SURE they are armed and ready to kill.

[wintler2]

Shot the boy dead for being black & in the wrong place: apartheid USA style.

[American Dream]

Cross-posted from The Economic Aspects of "Love":

http://advancethestruggle.wordpress.com ... k-out-715/

Another Black youth murdered in cold blood, and the murderer, according to the courts, is not guilty! The case of Trayvon Martin is an example of what America is composed of, the racism that deeply penetrates its veins, and the state that oversees its process. Trayvon Martin was vilified by the courts as a thug, and its murderer was defended as a noble citizen. How many Black and Latino youth have to be victims of such violence? When will we build a movement so powerful that can challenge such violence? When will the working class be organized to shutdown the system when such racist violence occurs? These are the critical questions of the day. We have experienced the Rodney King movement, the movement around the murder of Sean Bell, Kimani Gray, Kenneth Harding, and Oscar Grant. Yet these murders continue unchallenged.

Our strategy against such murders shall be, in the short term, organizing militant protests when such verdicts are executed and organize the working class in the long term as preparation for such moments. Only until the working class, located in strategic industries, that shutdowns components of the system, will we see a viable movement challenging the system. In the Oscar Grant movement we experienced a wave of rebellions on January 7th, and January 14th, 2009, as well as ILWU local 10 shutting down the port on October 23rd, 2010. The combination of street rebellions and shutting down industry are effective tactics against the state. The state, a concentration of power, will not take anything seriously, until there is a force that challenges such power ascends in the field of political battle. Our history of struggles against police brutality has been paralyzed between disorganized bursts of anger coupled with nonprofit lead forces that channel anger back into the system.

We need a militant organized movement of the working class who utilizes its position in society against state supported racist violence. The racist nature of American society will never be challenged until the working class begins to shutdown the system as a political response. A political organization with such explicit aims is needed to accomplish such tasks. Now is the time to organize for justice.

[vince]

"South america, TAKE IT AWAY!!!"

[Hunter]

NOT GUILTY

You will never walk this earth as a free man Zimmerman...you will always walk this earth guilty of killing a child...now on to the civil suit


BASTARD

I dont think there will be a civil suit he may have immunity from it because the home owners association he worked for already settled for 1 million to Trayvon's family.

There could be a federal civil rights investigation and trial however.


Frankly I tried to with hold my judgement until both sides were presented, I think Zimm was over zealous with the gun BUT the state did not prove he case of 2nd degree murder and really that is all that matters here that is how our system works, find me a better one, and the jury made the right decision, that does not mean I think he is not guilty it just means the state didnt prove it they presented a lousy case and the jury saw that and made the right decision, This is on the state and nobody else, those prosecutors blew it and Zimm's lawyers were fabulous, some of the cleanest, most ethical criminal defense work I have ever seen, Mark Omara is one of the best attorneys I have ever seen, very likable, very professional and there were no shenanigans from him or his team even though the judge did not rule in their favor often.


Sad case RIP TRAYVON this should have never happened,

[Hunter]

It's pretty unusual for a verdict to be announced on a Sat. night, doncha think? It's like the worst time you could announce this verdict. Or maybe they did it now because they thought it would go unnoticed? Everyone is out partying? I can't figure it out.

This judge was very good she moved things along very quickly unlike a lot of judges, the jury was sequestered and she asked them if they wanted to deliberate on the weekend to speed things along and they said yes, I was surprised to hear it on a saturday as well but this judge wanted to get those families home as soon as possible so they didnt take any days off, good on her for not dragging het feet and dragging this out, You dont see that often.

[seemslikeadream]

The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found innocent: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty.

The Zimmerman Jury Told Young Black Men What We Already Knew
Tonight a Florida man’s acquittal for hunting and killing a black teenager who was armed with only a bag of candy serves as a Rorschach test for the American public. For conservatives, it’s a triumph of permissive gun laws and a victory over the liberal media, which had been unfairly rooting for the dead kid all along. For liberals, it's a tragic and glaring example of the gaps that plague our criminal justice system. For people of color, it’s a vivid reminder that we must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.

When I was junior in college in Virginia, my then-girlfriend and I decided one night to meet up for a quick snack while studying for midterms. We bought some sandwiches at a 24-hour deli and, rather than waste time going to either of our homes, which were in opposite directions, we decided to eat in her car in a parking lot near a fancy hotel off-campus. We were listening to music and laughing about something when I saw a security guard’s headlights in the rear view mirror, and I stopped laughing as I watched him—a white man in his mid-40s—walk up to my girlfriend’s door and ask her to step out of the car. “Uh, OK,” she said, clearly as confused as I was about what we’d done to warrant his attention.

He walked her away from her car toward his, but they were close enough that I could hear their conversation. He asked her her name, a slight southern lilt lengthening his vowels. She told him. Then he said, “Are you OK? “

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Are you safe right now?” he asked again.

My girlfriend was white. I am not.

I leapt out of the car and screamed, “What the hell did you just ask her?” I wanted to see if he had the resolve to say it again, to me this time.

The security guard turned to face me. “It’s standard procedure, sir,” he said. “I was going to ask you if you were alright, too.”

“I think you’re lying,” I said.

“You can think what you’d like,” he said, a smile creeping up his face. “We can also call the police right now and sort this all out, because y’all aren’t supposed to be here and this is private property.”

I wanted to hit him in his fucking face. I wanted to take his flashlight from his belt and smash his teeth out, giving him a real reason to call the cops, a reason besides the crime of eating a sandwich in a parking lot.

But I was a 20-year-old brown kid in Virginia. It was late. I was with a white girl. I felt embarrassed, and the thought of being surrounded by more inquisitive white men with pepper spray and tasers and handcuffs and guns only made my face hotter. And so I apologized. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We didn’t know this was private property.”

“Well, now you know,” he said.

My girlfriend drove me home, where I stewed for hours and promised myself I’d report the guard in the morning. When I woke, however, I realized I didn’t have the guard’s name, nor did I even know what to report—it’s not against any rules to ask a white woman if the black man in the car with her is attacking her. It’s not against any rules to humiliate someone in a darkened parking lot in front of the person they love. It may, however, be against the rules to eat food in the parking lot in the first place. I never reported it. I think about it to this day.

It is a complicated thing to be young, black, and male in America. Not only are you well aware that many people are afraid of you—you can see them clutching their purses or stiffening in their subway seats when you sit across from them—you must also remain conscious of the fact that people expect you to be apologetic for their fear. It’s your job to be remorseful about the fact that your very nature makes them uncomfortable, like a pilot having to apologize to a fearful flyer for being in the sky.

If you’re a black man and you don’t remain vigilant of and obsequious to white people’s panic in your presence—if you, say, punch a man who accosts you during dinner with your girlfriend and screams “Nigger!” in your face, or if you, say, punch a man who is following you without cause in the dark with a handgun at his side—then you must be prepared to be arrested, be beaten, be shot through the heart and lung and die on the way home to watch a basketball game with your family. And after you are dead, other blacks should be prepared for people to say you are a vicious thug who deserved it. You smoked weed, for instance, and got in some fights at school (like I did)—obviously you had it coming. You were a ticking time bomb, and sooner or later someone was going to have to put you down.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, NOT GUILTY: BLOOD ON THE LEAVES
POSTED BY JELANI COBB

The not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial came down moments after I left a screening of “Fruitvale Station,” the film about the police shooting death of Oscar Grant four years ago in Oakland. Much of the audience sat quietly sobbing as the closing credits rolled, moved by a narrative of a young black man, unarmed and senselessly gone. Words were not needed to express a common understanding: to George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, the seventeen-year-old he shot, fit the description; for black America the circumstances of his death did.

The familiarity dulled the sharp edges of the tragedy. The decision the six jurors reached Saturday evening will inspire anger, frustration, and despair, but little surprise, and this is the most deeply saddening aspect of this entire affair. From the outset— throughout the forty-four days it took for there to be an arrest, and then in the sixteen months it took to for this case to come to trial—there was a nagging suspicion that it would culminate in disappointment. Call this historical profiling.

The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found innocent: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty. During his cross examination of Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, defense attorney Mark O’Mara asked if she was avoiding the idea that her son had done something to cause his own death. During closing arguments, the defense informed the jury that Martin was armed because he weaponized a sidewalk and used it bludgeon to George Zimmerman. During his post-verdict press conference, O’Mara said that were his client black, he would never have been charged. At the defense’s table, and in the precincts far beyond it where donors stepped forward to contribute the funds that underwrote their efforts, there is a sense that George Zimmerman was the victim.

O’Mara’s statement echoed a criticism that began circulating long before Martin and Zimmerman encountered each other. Thousands of black boys die at the hands of other African Americans each year, but the black community, it holds, is concerned only when those deaths are caused by whites. It’s an appealing argument, and widespread, but simplistic and obtuse. It’s a belief most easily held when you’ve not witnessed peace rallies and makeshift memorials, when you’ve turned a blind eye to grassroots organizations like the Interrupters in Chicago working valiantly to stem the tide of violence in the city. It is the thinking of people who’ve never wondered why African Americans disproportionately support strict gun control legislation. The added quotient of outrage in cases like this one stems not from the belief that a white murderer is somehow worse than a black one, but from the knowledge that race determines whether fear, history, and public sentiment offer that killer a usable alibi.

The thousands who gathered last spring in New York, in St. Louis, in Philadelphia, in Miami, and in Washington, D.C., to demand Zimmerman’s arrest shared a narrative and an understanding of the past’s grip on the present. Long before the horrifying images of Martin lying prone and lifeless in the grass ever made their way to Gawker, he’d already begun to inspire references to the line about “blood on the leaves” from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” Those crowds were the response of people who understand that history is interred in the shallowest of graves.

Yet the problem is not that this entire affair marks a low point in this country’s racial history—it’s that after two centuries of common history, we’re still obligated to chart high points and low ones. To be black at times like this is to see current events on a real-time ticker, a Dow Jones average measuring the quality of one’s citizenship. Trayvon Martin’s death is an American tragedy, but it will mainly be understood as an African-American one. That it occurred in a country that elected and reëlected a black president doesn’t diminish the despair this verdict inspires, it intensifies it. The fact that such a thing can happen at a moment of unparalleled political empowerment tells us that events like these are a hard, unchanging element of our landscape.

We can take from this verdict the understanding that it means validation for the idea that the actions George Zimmerman took that night are those of a reasonable man, that the conclusions he drew are sound, and that a black teenager can be considered armed any time he is walking down a paved street. We can take from this trial the knowledge that a grieving family was capable of displaying inestimable reserves of grace. Following the verdict Sybrina Fulton posted a benediction to Twitter: “Lord during my darkest hour I lean on you. You are all that I have. At the end of the day, GOD is still in control.” The Twitter account of Tracy Martin, Trayvon’s father, features an image of him holding Trayvon as a toddler, a birthday hat perched on the boy’s head. At trial, they sat through a grim procession of autopsy photos and audio of the gunshot that ended their son’s life. No matter what the verdict, their simple pursuit of justice meant amplifying the trauma of their loss by some unknowable exponent.

There’s fear that the verdict will embolden vigilantes but that need not be the concern: History has already done that. You need not recall specifics of everything that has transpired in Florida over the past two hundred years to recognize this. The details of Rosewood, the black town terrorized and burned to the ground in 1923, and of Groveland and the black men falsely accused of rape and murdered there in 1949, can remain obscure and retain sway over our present concerns. Names—like Claude Neal, lynched in 1934, and Harry and Harriette Moore, N.A.A.C.P. organizers in Mims County, killed by a firebomb in 1951—can be overlooked. What cannot be forgotten, however, is that there were no consequences for those actions.

Perhaps history does not repeat itself exactly, but it is certainly prone to extended paraphrases. Long before the jury announced its decision, many people had seen what the outcome would be, had known it would be a strange echo of the words Zimmerman uttered that rainy night in central Florida: they always get away.

[seemslikeadream]

White Supremacy Acquits George Zimmerman
Aura Bogado on July 14, 2013 - 12:05 AM ET

Demonstrators outside the Seminole County Courthouse react after hearing the verdict of “not guilty” in the trial of George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

A jury has found George Zimmerman not guilty of all charges in connection to death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But while the verdict came as a surprise to some people, it makes perfect sense to others. This verdict is a crystal-clear illustration of the way white supremacy operates in America.

Throughout the trial, the media repeatedly referred to an “all-woman jury” in that Seminole County courtroom, adding that most of them were mothers. That is true—but so is that five of the six jurors were white, and that is profoundly significant for cases like this one. We also know that the lone juror of color was seen apparently wiping a tear during the prosecution’s rebuttal yesterday. But that tear didn’t ultimately convince her or the white people on that jury that Zimmerman was guilty of anything. Not guilty. Not after stalking, shooting and killing a black child, a child that the defense insultingly argued was “armed with concrete.”

In the last few days, Latinos in particular have spoken up again about Zimmerman’s race, and the “white Hispanic” label especially, largely responding to social media users and mass media pundits who employed the term. Watching Zimmerman in the defense seat, his sister in the courtroom, and his mother on the stand, one can’t deny the skin color that informs their experience. They are not white. Yet Zimmerman’s apparent ideology—one that is suspicious of black men in his neighborhood, the “assholes who always get away—” is one that adheres to white supremacy. It was replicated in the courtroom by his defense, whose team tore away at Rachel Jeantel, questioning the young woman as if she was taking a Jim Crow–era literacy test. A defense that, during closing, cited slave-owning rapist Thomas Jefferson, played an animation for the jury based on erroneous assumptions, made racially coded accusations about Trayvon Martin emerging “out of the darkness,” and had the audacity to compare the case of the killing of an unarmed black teenager to siblings arguing over which one stole a cookie.

When Zimmerman was acquitted today, it wasn’t because he’s a so-called white Hispanic. He’s not. It’s because he abides by the logic of white supremacy, and was supported by a defense team—and a swath of society—that supports the lingering idea that some black men must occasionally be killed with impunity in order to keep society-at-large safe.

Media on the left, right and center have been fanning the flames of fear-mongering, speculating that people—and black people especially—will take to the streets. That fear-mongering represents a deep white anxiety about black bodies on the streets, and echoes Zimmerman’s fears: that black bodies on the street pose a public threat. But the real violence in those speculations, regardless of whether they prove to be true, is that it silences black anxiety. The anxiety that black men feel every time they walk outside the door—and the anxiety their loved ones feel for them as well. That white anxiety serves to conceal the real public threat: that a black man is killed every twenty-eight hours by a cop or vigilante.

People will take to the streets, and with good reason. They’ll be there because they know that, yes, some people do always get away—and it tends to be those strapped with guns and the logic of white supremacy at their side.

[Hunter]

See I cant support the state even in the OJ and Casey Anthony case because they are incompetent assholes that I work with daily and you would not believe the shenanigans they pull and the laws they break during trials.


Does the defense do it too? OF COURSE, but there has been none in this case that I have seen or heard of yet, the defense played by the rules.

Here is a fine example here of the state hiding evidence in this case:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/13/justi ... index.html



Again I am not entirely happy Zimm got away with this and I think he was hasty with his gun, he profiled the kid and he was an overzealous wannabe cop, but when the state does shit like this, the accused deserve to walk IMO simply because the alternative is even more of a police state than we already have here.

AND from what I am reading this is only the tip of the iceberg, a lot of prosecutor misconduct is going to be coming to light in the next few weeks and the Bar Association is already taking measures to look in to it. NONE OF WHICH THE DEFENSE HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF AT ALL.

[Hunter]

Zimm isnt even white so these asshats taking his cause as their own is ridiculous and not even worth discussing. (Not meaning you SLAD I do appreciate the article, but these people are ridiculous this wasnt a white on black crime no matter how hard they try to make it be.) Race was involved, I think profiling was involved, I think TM was just mining his own business but the state with held evidence that may indicate otherwise, that still doesnt mean the kid deserved to be shot, he did not.