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

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."

i read an article like that, and then see how old its author is and am thankful that he will likely be dead in a decade. fuck that guy

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.

― goole, Tuesday, July 16, 2013 2:49 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wouldn't call the decades-long gay rights struggle, of which the fight for gay marriage was a (and, at various points, the) key part, "swiftly."

great post balls

yeah. frightening, but really on point.

as a half-hispanic guy who can easily pass for white, i've struggled to find a place in the discourse over zimmerman & his/the trial's relationship to racism & white supremacy. a friend of mine wrote something i found helpful in locating a place to plant my feet. i wonder if it might help someone else like me.

http://t.co/lb3eaKXi0D

i'm not extremely well read on american politics

but, to me, the thing that seems to drive so much of america today, especially the ugly stuff, is that somewhere along the line the right was able to convince a lot of white males that, although by any reasonable measure they still hold the lion's share of power, wealth, and decision-making in this country, they are somehow "oppressed" by the people LOWER than them on the socioeconomic food chain.

i mean i know this is a fairly obvious observation but i assume it wasn't always like this and does anyone know when this started and how it became so?

reagan

reagan specifically or just that era in general?

they are oppressed because uneducated white males used to have (some) social/economic/etc. power that isn't (always, immediately) allotted to them today. so as minorities and women gained rights in the 20th century, white males did 'lose something'. you mighta been poor and dumb but at least you weren't the one sitting at the back of the bus. etc.

there's a lot on that subject in stayin alive: the 1970s and the last days of the working class--iirc nixon's efforts to snare white working class votes away from the george wallace wing of the party involved attempts to bring the union bosses that hated mcgovern over to the right. eventually he gave up on trying to horse trade with the likes of george meany and tried to make appeals to the resentments of the white working class a direct part of the election strategy.

wow @ at that richard cohen article. just...wow.

i guess you really can be as racist as you want in print as long as you remember to couch it in "i'm not racist, but..." terms.

"you used to have all these nice union jobs and pensions to yourself, now you have to share them with the black man and the mexican man and before you know it, the gay man will be coming for your job"

xp

nixon established this, and the gop hasn't really changed the tune since.

that Kos article was great

"I think what we have in George Zimmerman is a person who very likely has tried to be a police officer many, many, many times but couldn't for some very good reasons. He has probably tried to apply to police departments and could not pass the entry requirements. Now from the surface you would say this is because of his size. You may surmise that he probably couldn't meet the weight or fitness standard. But I disagree. I would wager that Mr. Zimmerman has probably never gotten past the psyche evaluation. I'm sure laws prohibit the release of applicant information but I would bet that he has applied to at least 2 or more sheriff or police departments in the area and has been declined. You see even in a big city it's a relatively small community. Once you begin applying and fail a polygraph or fail a psych, that follows you. Chances are he's failed a few and has likely been blacklisted. Judging from his demeanor and some of the witness statements he may have some delusions as well. As many voter purges as FL has done it is amazing that this man was able to purchase a weapon after an altercation with police and a DV but I assume that is what having a father in law enforcement will get you. Just from the 30,000 foot view Zimmerman probably never should have been able to purchase a gun. Zimmerman never should have held the job that he did. And Zimmerman never should have been able to get away with murder but he did."

xp thanks for that article big hoos (white Latino here)

I wonder if Zimmerman would have been near-universally referred to as white if his last name had been Gonzales

re: nixon and working class votes

a similar theme has played out in the UK too, and i don't think it's just a case of individual political calculations - white working class men won concessions from employers and government in the era immediately before civil rights started to gain traction. white working class men have always been vulnerable to threats of competition from "outsiders" - this goes back to the 19th century in Europe and the US i think