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

xpost I agree with that. But manslaughter should have been the runner-up, not an acquittal.

911 dispatchers are not police, they are civilians, and have no statutory authority to require you to do anything at all. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Zimmerman was under no obligation to obey the 911 dispatcher however strongly or weakly worded "Stay in the car" was.

xxxp I think you are dreaming.

One thing I will concede is that some of the specifics of the specifics of this case would not be likely occur in some places (due to geography, economics, other laws governing carrying of firearms, etc). But assuming we are talking about the same case in all regards and we've just moved the locale magically to let's say SF well I don't have much reason to doubt that the outcome would be the same (with a hung jury at best on the manslaughter charge).

That's surprising to me. What would the defense be?

Besides SYG (which CA has, correct)?

Regardless, weakened SYG laws would undoubtedly make this kind of outcome less likely.

maybe i'm wrong. if anyone's got a similar recent case (armed civilian pursues, confronts and kills an unarmed civilian against the advice of authorities, is not immediately arrested and when charged, is found guilty of nothing), i'd like to hear about it.

The defense is the same (self-defense). At point where Zimmerman is on the ground having his head slammed into the pavement, it is largely irrelevant what the 911 dispatch told him or whatever other mistakes he made. He was reasonably afraid for his life and had to defend himself.

I don't get what we're fighting about. Florida being a giant redneck turd that should be flushed into the ocean and the rest of America being filled with racist fickheads aren't mutually exclusive ideas. Let's sink Florida now while the irons hot & pick of the rest as we go

Fickheads!

I can't disagree.

ums otm

florida is full of lots of very nice people, and people who should not fall into the ocean. it is also home to a great deal of poverty and misery (not uniquely, i know, but especially so for historical/demographic reasons and especially lately because of the role of its real estate in the last boom bust cycle)

bear in mind if you want florida to fall into the ocean that includes all the people in florida that are on the receiving end of all the crummy stuff that you are now identifying with florida.

I'm not fighting about anything. I'm just saying, racism may be pervasive, but it is even more pervasive and executable, so to speak - as are certain gun laws, as are attempts to restrict abortion rights, etc. - in some states than others. And that's probably where the focus should stay fixed. That is, you can say there's just as much racism and injustice in San Fran as there is in Sanford, and indeed both states share almost the exact same SYG law, nearly verbatim (coincidence?), and you may be right. But what happened in Sanford - particularly the outcome - I still say would not happen in San Fran, even though legally it certainly could.

Most places in America are full of good people who vote for these horrible politicians and laws. There was a doc I saw years ago called "Dear Jesse" about the weird disconnect between nice neighbors and hospitality in North Carolina and the knowledge that many of those same nice neighbors voted, again and again, for a hateful slug like Jesse Helms.

Was it the New Yorker that had the profile of that one old lady who has been pushing SYG laws on everyone for decades?

florida is full of lots of very nice people, and people who should not fall into the ocean. it is also home to a great deal of poverty and misery (not uniquely, i know, but especially so for historical/demographic reasons and especially lately because of the role of its real estate in the last boom bust cycle)

bear in mind if you want florida to fall into the ocean that includes all the people in florida that are on the receiving end of all the crummy stuff that you are now identifying with florida.
― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Thursday, July 18, 2013 10:06 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

speaking as a Floridian...sink the fucker. just let me organize a series of secret buses first to get the dece ppls out. if anybody asks what the buses are for I'll just say "Coachella" and everyone will just shrug and head back to their hammocks.

s.clover otm, and what does it say to the oppressed in Florida that the rest of America wants to abandon them

Speaking as the godfather to a black-Filipino Floridian, please don't sink them

I sure wish a method of sinking FL into the ocean didn't actually exist, but alas....

yeah you guys god is already sinking florida

decision is made

I mean we helped a little

state motto: "friends for eternity, loyalty, honesty."

won't somebody think of the orphans?

As a Miamian I protest. I will not board any bus marked "Coachella."

these threads get so interesting when people seriously debate whether a state should secede/be expelled, because that is a thing that has a chance of happening

i'm with the people saying it is stupid to turn against an entire state. boycotting florida would have the same effect as the economic sanctions the US imposes on countries whose governments it doesn't like: it will only hurt the most vulnerable people there and have very little effect on the people you want to hurt.

Odds are that for most people that don't live in Florida, "boycotting the state" would require zero effort.

Whoever said protest the NRA, Sanford Police, SYG lawmakers, etc. That's a far smarter way to look at this.

i have a fantasy that a massive, national "boycott florida" movement will emerge and scare some sanity in their government. has nothing to do with actually boycotting florida, and i'm happy to admit that it'll never happen.

I have a fantasy that American film and TV stop portraying guns as anything other than instruments of horror and oppression, but that will never happen.

pfffft

hey guys i'm not entirely serious about sinking florida into the ocean

but honestly a boycott florida thing would be good! i think showing states the financial consequences of the backwards republican agenda is good...

will it be like, an orange juice and Skynyrd boycott? or an academic boycott of Scripps Florida and all their promising cancer treatments and shit?

yachts, I think

Coke and Weed

a FL boycott would serve to trigger the Conservative "oh yeah? FUCK YOU Imma do/think the exact opposite of these Liberal pansies" reflex

yeah but if the obama years have taught us anything is that they do that no matter how reasonable or cooperative you try to be, so fuck em

exactly there is an upside to this in that it might lead to a new civil war xp

this country is fucked so now we should just troll conservatives for the fun of it

Boycotts can be effective - South Africa is a classic example - but it seems like an odd idea to boycott a state over one court case. I'm not American but I don't even understand how a Florida boycott would work, partly for reasons that are given above. Would people stop visiting Disneyland and buying oranges until ... what? Until SYG (a law that is in effect in many other states and that was not even part of GZ's defence) is repealed? Until they change gun laws that, afaik, are not radically different from those in other states? The South Africa boycott had a very clear purpose.

xp but i don't wanna get shot bro!

foreigners would prob play as significant as americans eg nice friendly Dutch families start to feel like it's immoral/dangerous to go to dinseyworld or Miami

But as ThinkProgress explained in a post earlier today, the jury instructions contained the law’s key provision and instructed jurors that self-defense meant Zimmerman was entitled to “stand his ground” with “no duty to retreat.”

As I understand it, SYG was main reason why GZ wasn't arrested from the outset. Due to SYG, police needed proof that he didn't act in self-defense

^ that may have been the cops' excuse, but it isn't true. SYG doesn't prevent the police from arresting killers.

Maybe the cops knew the law was so broad and stupid that they figured, why bother even arresting him?

maybe the cops were just incompetent racist assholes

bear in mind if you want florida to fall into the ocean that includes all the people in florida that are on the receiving end of all the crummy stuff that you are now identifying with florida.

very otm.

i have always kind of hated the "ugh! let's get rid of florida/arizona/the south/etc" response that liberals invariably indulge in whenever something bad happens because in nearly all cases much of the best and most effective criticism comes from the actual ppl who live in those places.

there were about a million 'boycott arizona!' calls after SB 1070 passed, and you know what? they accomplished fuck-all. if anything, they made the hardliners in arizona angrier and more determined.

it made people stop drinking arizona tea

arrgh I am sure this has come up many times already but wtf why can't these poor sad whiteguys knock it off with the "OMG IT'S THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES DON'T YOU SEE WHITE PPL ARE OPPRESSED TOO" bullshit examples like this one

http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/490926/jury-finds-roderick-scott-not-guilty/

I mean, I pretty much know the answer but FUCK

Boycott golf

preemptively done

Yeah i figured id be preachin to the choir there