Let's talk about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and how unbelievably fucked up this all is

sorry -- i'm gonna ignore the meta infighting here and say something else. (aside - Rev, hugs from me to you. It's hard to see someone in that kind of pain.)

In the wake of all of this, i've been thinking a lot about this thing I wrote in March of 2000, when i was living in NC and working for a local paper. My dad invited me to go on an anniversary march in Selma, and I was like sure, I'll go. I took some pictures, and the words and pictures in the story below are all mine. I removed my name because it's my name. I've been a little embarrassed about how earnest I got toward the end, the preachy tone of my last paragraph, but fuck it. I thought then, have thought my whole life, and will continue to think that activism is a required part of civic duty.

My dad had the article photocopied, took the copy to John Lewis to have him sign it, and then framed it and gave it to me as a gift. It has been sitting around in storage for a long time, but i think I'll hang it up to get me psyched up for the next academic year.

here it is, i'm just posting it as a reminder that this is a conversation we apparently still need to be having.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7362/9298340525_196e109051.jpg

oh shit! wrong link! mod please remove!!

i hope this is the right one
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5465/9298438043_553201b44f.jpg

Hey, a deliberate mischaracterization! It's like the bat signal for me!

1. That first quote was directly for the Rev after I had directly been accused of racism by him, and you know that. It was not entirely clear to me that he was accusing me also of "(m)inimizing the reality of the psychological trauma that racialized violence creates for black people", an absolutely unspeakable accusation and one based on a complete misunderstanding of anything I have ever written on ILX (let alone this fucking thread), so I made my response conditional.

2. As you well fucking know, that second response was at aimed at no person in particular but at a line of argument that you, and not you alone, were picking up. Here is the whole sentence, which I stand by except for the lousy late night grammar (which I have corrected in brackets): "A racist legislature, racist police and racist prosecutors conspire to set Zimmerman free, and you think people who aren't calling for the destruction of one of the few judicial systems in the world (in which a defendant has) even a ghost of a chance of avoiding or escaping an unjust conviction are the ones going 'ho-hum, omelettes and eggs', then you are a dummy and a dupe and a lot of prosecutors can't wait to shake your hand as they help you fuck yourself."

x-post: as to Austria: wow, are you ever dumb. (That was a direct personal attack brought on by your nearly comical ignorance of the political situation in the country that brought the world the Nazi Fucking Party.)

itt: a safe space for touchy defensive people

don't forget the pseudoradical cryptofascists like yrself now clove

rumbled!

though that's more in this board i guess, maybe you showed some levity on a picket fences thread once who knows

clove which part of the bill of rights do you hope gets repealed first, 'when the revolution comes'? or would you just scrap all of it?

you seem especially fond of habeas dorkus, i suppose?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6pvyuex011rwgdwdo1_500.jpg

I was at this gathering yesterday and found Rev. Barber's words profoundly moving and I thought I would share them here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQAj6IxBh78

Why bother?

that's what i was wondering myself

just forget my article and pictures and sincerity
i'm sorry i brought it up
not sorry like "it's my fault", but sorry like "i regret sharing this piece of my life experience here"

I just wanted to defuse something that was about to get uglier but that was probably a bad idea.

strike "probably"

The juror also offered up details of the preliminary vote from the jury at the very start of their deliberations: three jurors—including B37—were in favor of acquittal, two supported a manslaughter conviction, and the other believed Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder. In the end, of course, the six women agreed that he was not guilty.

I for one am glad you bothered, LL and Aero.

i've never before felt actual heartache in response to an internet discussion. can't say i recommend it.

moving on: thanks aero, and you don't have anything to apologize for, la lechera.

thirded.

while it's hardly a big victory, good news on the B37 Juror book getting squashed thanks to a persistent Twitter user:

http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2013/07/persistent-tweeter-ends-juror-b37s-book-deal/

i'm not apologizing, i'm regretting

about 15 minutes into the rev. barber speech aero posted: HELL YES! incredible moment

^ encourage everyone to watch this

^this. thanks for posting that.

http://madamenoire.com/286260/bet-you-never-thought-that-by-shooting-a-black-man-youd-inherit-all-of-his-struggles-lance-gross-pens-gripping-letter-to-george-zimmerman/

Has this been posted? Some of these are amazing.

http://wearenottrayvonmartin.tumblr.com/

Aero that video was fantastic, thankyou for posting

LL I'm glad you shared your experience, it's v inspiring

don't know if this was posted but a cop's anonymous take on the verdict and zimmerman vigilante types:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/14/1223459/-A-Cop-s-take-on-the-Verdict?detail=email

good article

listening to talk radio today and yesterday has been depressing and enlightening and not in the usual or predictable way. there's definitely gloating and a sense of vindication (and hopefully that's all all of this really amounts to) but there's also this persistent tone that the verdict is just the start of something, of a reclamation or whatever. this morning i heard 'whites haven't been racist for decades and black have been allowed to be and the govt has enforced it and that has got to change, zimmerman was only the beginning' and limbaugh today apparently said that white ppl need to 'reclaim' the n-word and hannity, who's always been ott outwardly racist but esp hysterical about 'reverse racism' (i remember he went on for DAYS about jamie foxx calling michael jackson a black artist - 'why can't he just be an artist? why attack white ppl?'), saying that this is moment can't be wasted, laws must be changed, we need to take this country back from the thugs and the takers. if there's been any hope to come out of this it's been that perhaps some organization and change would come out of this but my worry is that the only effective organization and the only immediate change we're going to see is going to be incredibly and possibly openly reactionary and racist, that stand yr ground laws or arizona's anti-hispanic laws or nyc's search and seizure policies are going to seem genteel in comparison. the supreme court already opened the door but this goes beyond the career advantages and partisan rigging created by gerrymandering, this is fodder for the base. more open and extreme efforts at disenfranchisement seem a minimum. i can't overstate the dread i feel at the gop (esp in the south it should go w/o saying)(and trust me i'm not 'beating up on the south', i'm southern i love the south, but pretending that things are bad all over and the south isn't esp toxic and savage and frankly evil and has always been since at least edward rutledge is naive and clueless, however racist you want to say boston or la or new york are - and i'm not saying they're not plenty racist, america's got plenty of hate to go round - it doesn't begin to compare to the tradition and complete saturation of racism in the south) taking it's 'war on women' approach to legislating and applying it to blacks, esp since hatred of blacks both runs deeper in the gop (and america) and is more profitable to the prison industry and the gun industry who have greater influence and deeper pockets than ralph reed could even begin to imagine. i can understand ppl that look at the past and the present and are filled w/ despair or disgust or outrage or even fear and i can acknowledge that me being able to relatively shrug it off and look at the situation pseudorationally is an extension of my privilege (and twu you've made some good points and taken some very unfair attacks despite promoting more comity than other eg myself but there is not a place on earth where being white compares to what it's like to be black in america, that's a gulf that can't be bridged, if you are a white man it is simply unknowable and you can feel guilt over it or relief, i tend to go w/ the latter, but true empathy is probably impossible) but right now what disturbs me isn't what this means about or for america today but what it could mean tomorrow. i know after 2012 everybody's buying into the judits and teixeira argument and taking some perverse comfort or glee in every suicidal gesture by the gop in reacting to this demographically inevitable america but we should know that whatever certainty we have of this benetton utopia being just over the horizon or possibly even already here it's nothing compared to the certainty the right has that it's coming and that much of the party (and even more of the base) has that it must be blocked, reversed, and attacked w/o restraint. things are only going to get uglier and 'you watch, in 2032 a democrat might be competitive in texas' isn't much of a consolation.

derp, sorry for not breaking it up into paragraphs but tbf i'm pretty sure nobody's actually going to read that

god i might have if you had bothered to break it up

jesus
why post it otherwise?

i apologize for the post, i think i'm going to stop posting here for awhile.

nah, it was good

i mean, yeah, the enter key is our friend, but i agree with the sentiment. i think the internal GOP civil war hasn't even started yet, and between your dad's country club republicanism and the really dark dark shit i'm not optimistic on the winner.

also slotted into your observations somewhere is that the only people i've seen openly hoping for rioting have been white creeps, and i've seen it a LOT.

good post balls

I read it! But im a fan of the war on punctuation.

the internal gop civil war has started and is over

the worse guys won

don't know if this was posted but a cop's anonymous take on the verdict and zimmerman vigilante types:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/14/1223459/-A-Cop-s-take-on-the-Verdict?detail=email

― adrian "stanky" legg (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, July 16, 2013 12:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is really good

never read it in its book-length form, but instinctively i don't buy the judis and texiera argument. nothing is inevitable. gay marriage came out of nowhere (not nowhere but you can see what i mean). i can see a few different right wing ideas taking hold of the consensus just as swiftly.

I haven't figured out a way to explain to racist relatives that "black racism towards white" doesn't exist. They don't want to hear it.

the remark I return to was dropped into McCain's concession speech in 2008: the faintly hectoring way in which he reminded the audience that I don't wanna hear you whine about racism and possibilities for black youth anymore; you got your black president. This sentiment undergirds a lot of the racism I hear.

never read it in its book-length form, but instinctively i don't buy the judis and texiera argument. nothing is inevitable. gay marriage came out of nowhere (not nowhere but you can see what i mean). i can see a few different right wing ideas taking hold of the consensus just as swiftly.

eh demographics are inevitable. but America is the a place where hispanics can turn into right-wing gun-toting 'white people' faster than some people might expect.

i get the sick feeling that this trial represents a surrogate victory over obama in some peoples' minds.

Or a victory for dumbfuckery like this.

i mean, yeah, the enter key is our friend, but i agree with the sentiment. i think the internal GOP civil war hasn't even started yet, and between your dad's country club republicanism and the really dark dark shit i'm not optimistic on the winner.

also slotted into your observations somewhere is that the only people i've seen openly hoping for rioting have been white creeps, and i've seen it a LOT.

― goole, Tuesday, July 16, 2013 2:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, there seemed to be a group of those crepey white folk who were almost wanting to will riots into existence, as if it would give them an opportunity to say "SEE?!!!" in some kind of gotcha moment. For all the talk of 'riot' fears in Sanford, nothing really came of it (at least, nothing unusual for that area). There were demonstrations, but peaceable from the accounts I've heard.

A black friend of mine did express a desire for riots. It was heartbreaking because of who this statement came from. This wasn't someone prone to rage expressing a logical extension of that rage upon the verdict. This is a peaceable guy, one of the friendliest I know. Someone who actually managed to laugh off a clueless group of white power/separatist assholes who for some reason, were allowed to have a merch booth at the Rockstar Mayhem festival. But this trial...broke him. Several people tried to console him, but without much luck. Mostly because you can't say "things will get better" without being dishonest and patronizing in this situation. When assholes are celebrating and setting off fireworks at the verdict, it's hard to say with any level of confidence that things will get better anytime soon :/.

xpost ugh that link is ugggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh

I unfriended family members on FB this week who were complaining about "Obama using the Zimmerman trial to push for more gun control."