Trayvon Martin: Amazed no one has posted this....

[Detroit Stylin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1354909.html

[Crumbled_pavement]

There really isn't an audience here for this story. But yes, this story really pisses me off greatly.

[gazhekwe]

I've been following this though. It is outrageous. One of the Big Rules of the neighborhood mobile watch programs is Do Not Engage, and of course, No Weapons is the top of the top. This guy needs to be charged, manslaughter at the very least.

Editing to add further thoughts: He put himself in at risk by stalking the young man, but his life was never threatened by the unarmed teen. Any time you get viewed as a threat for just walking down the sidewalk, something is seriously amiss with the person seeing threat. For the teen to confront him may not have been smart, but what was he to do? In the white world, a white child being stalked can run up on a porch to call for help, but what of the black child in the white world?

The police chief can say he is color blind all he wants, but he too sees a black man walking in a white neighborhood as a threat. He doesn't even know that is wrong.

[vetalalumni]

I've been following this though. It is outrageous. One of the Big Rules of the neighborhood mobile watch programs is Do Not Engage, and of course, No Weapons is the top of the top. This guy needs to be charged, manslaughter at the very least.

Editing to add further thoughts: He put himself in at risk by stalking the young man, but his life was never threatened by the unarmed teen. Any time you get viewed as a threat for just walking down the sidewalk, something is seriously amiss with the person seeing threat. For the teen to confront him may not have been smart, but what was he to do? In the white world, a white child being stalked can run up on a porch to call for help, but what of the black child in the white world?

The police chief can say he is color blind all he wants, but he too sees a black man walking in a white neighborhood as a threat. He doesn't even know that is wrong.

Well stated Gazhekwe.

Our collective silence speaks volumes.

[Crumbled_pavement]

Any time you get viewed as a threat for just walking down the sidewalk, something is seriously amiss with the person seeing threat.

Seems like the whole community down there saw the threat as well as the neighborhood watchman, hence no charges in the brutal cold blooded murder of an innocent unarmed teen whose only crime was he would only be able to produce black offspring instead of white offspring.

[gazhekwe]

Here's another article on the case:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...tin-1995-2012/

Some key points:
10. According to neighbors, Zimmerman was “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” [Miami Herald]
11. Zimmerman “had been the subject of complaints by neighbors in his gated community for aggressive tactics” [Huffington Post]
12. A police officer “corrected” a key witness. “The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness. ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.” [ABC News]

[Crumbled_pavement]

Here's another article on the case:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...tin-1995-2012/

Some key points:
10. According to neighbors, Zimmerman was “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” [Miami Herald]
11. Zimmerman “had been the subject of complaints by neighbors in his gated community for aggressive tactics” [Huffington Post]
12. A police officer “corrected” a key witness. “The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness. ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.” [ABC News]

Thanks for the update. Why does none of this surprise me?

[Pam]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101477867

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver [[D-Mo.) released a statement on Monday calling the shooting death of Trayvon Martin a “hate crime” and urging the Department of Justice to investigate.

[Pam]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1364734.html

"Even though he was a little younger, he was one of us," Neal said Monday afternoon at the Seminole County criminal court building, where more than 100 college students came from across the state to demand justice for Martin, whose killer remains free. "He was a student with dreams like us."

[Crumbled_pavement]

George Zimmerman will more than likely be charged with something eventually and spend some time in jail for this crime. What bothers me more is that there is a police department and a community that is apathetic to this crime. It's not just one person, Zimmerman, who places low value on the life of a human, it's a whole community and even a police department willing to cover for Zimmerman that places a low value on human life. And people swear we're in post racial America. Yea?

[gazhekwe]

It is sickening. I hear that boy crying in my dreams, and every mother probably hears the same thing. A son was just walking down the street. Another son saw a "perp" and the glory of stopping a crime. I am sorry for both of their families, but it is time for us all to wake up and see that everyone we do not know, or is a different color, is not a threat. Fear did this, and for that, we all bear a burden.

[Pam]

What bothers me more is that there is a police department and a community that is apathetic to this crime

I don't think the community is apathetic, just the police.

[gazhekwe]

Trayvon was on the phone with a girl during the attack:

"He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man," Martin's friend said. "I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run."Eventually he would run, said the girl, thinking that he'd managed to escape. But suddenly the strange man was back, cornering Martin."Trayvon said, 'What, are you following me for,' and the man said, 'What are you doing here.' Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the head set just fell. I called him again and he didn't answer the phone."The line went dead. Besides screams heard on 911 calls that night as Martin and Zimmerman scuffled, those were the last words he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-mar...7#.T2h5iRFmK5I

[BasementBeat]

Very disturbing story. Sounds as if the police went out of their way to protect the obvious psychotic Zimmerman; while they shrug their shoulders at the life of an unarmed child.

[BasementBeat]

The full Zimmerman 911 call. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL72w...ature=youtu.be

*sigh*

[gazhekwe]

Leonard Pitts' column today:

When others choose not to see you
They do not see you. For every African American, it comes as surely as hard times, setback and tears, that moment when you realize somebody is looking right at you and yet not seeing you — as if you had become cellophane, as if you had become air, as if somehow, some way, you were right there and at the same time not.

Ralph Ellison described that phenomenon in a milestone novel that begins as follows: “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe. Nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

Trayvon Martin was killed on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., fully 60 years after Ellison published “Invisible Man.” The circumstances of the unarmed 17-yearold’s death suggest that even six decades later, invisibility plagues black folks still.

It happened like this. He was visiting his father, watching hoops on television. At halftime, he left his dad’s townhouse in a gated community and walked to a 7-Eleven for snacks. There was a light drizzle, and he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. On the way back, he drew the attention of George Zimmerman, captain of the neighborhood watch.

Zimmerman, who is white, called police from his SUV and told them he was following a “suspicious” character. The dispatcher promised to send a prowl car and told Zimmerman to stay in his vehicle. He didn’t.

When police arrived, they found him with a bloody nose and Martin face down on the grass not far from his father’s door, a gunshot wound in his chest. Zimmerman said he shot the boy in self-defense. Police did not arrest him.

At this writing, nearly three weeks later, they still have not, citing insufficient evidence. The case has been referred to the state’s attorney, and the NAACP has asked the Justice Department to intervene. All of which raises a number of pressing questions:

How can you get out of your truck against police advice, instigate a fight, get your nose bloodied in said fight, shoot the person you were fighting with, and claim self-defense? If anyone was defending himself, wasn’t it Trayvon Martin? Would police have been so forbearing had Martin confronted and killed an unarmed George Zimmerman?

Of course, the most pressing question is this: What exactly was it that made this boy seem ”suspicious”? The available evidence suggests a sad and simple answer: He existed while black.

The manner of said existence doesn’t matter. It is the existing itself that is problematic. Again: Sometimes, they do not see you. That’s one of the great frustrations of African-American life, those times when you are standing right there, minding your business, tending your house, coming home from the store, and other people are looking right at you, yet do not see you.

They see instead their own superstitions and suppositions, paranoia and guilt, night terrors and vulnerabilities. They see the perpetrator, the suspect, the mug shot, the dark and scary face that lurks at the open windows of their vivid imaginings. They see the unknown, the unassimilable, the other. They see every thing in the world but you. And their blindness costs you.

First and foremost, it costs your sacred individuality. But it may also cost you a job, an education, your freedom. If you are unlucky like Trayvon Martin, it may even cost your life. He lay bloody and ruined in wet grass with nothing in his pockets but $22, a can of lemonade and a bag of Skittles, not a type, not a kind, but just himself, a kid who liked horses and sports, who struggled with chemistry, who went out for snacks and never came home. Visible too late.

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Oli...&view=ZW50aXR5

[Jimaz]

From an attorney familiar with that area of Florida: Papantonio: Trayvon Killer Should Be Charged With Premeditated Murder

[Jimaz]

Hartmann provides some background on the origin of these shoot first laws: Legal to shoot a black teen in FL but illegal to shoot a dog?

[rb336]

This is the America the NRA wants for us. Vigilantes running wild with impunity.

[Crumbled_pavement]

Hartmann provides some background on the origin of these shoot first laws: Legal to shoot a black teen in FL but illegal to shoot a dog?

If this is true [[what was reported in the video) then someone should find George Zimmerman on the streets and just gun him down. Afterall, I feel very threatened by scum like him.

[Zacha341]

I cannot see how this shooting was justified! The love "Paul Kersey" types that are commenting in the varied web articles can shove it!! That narrative is not applicable here [[a young black man wearing a hoodie is not enough) and the 911 information is revealing that Zimmerman was out of order, and acting well beyond patrol and general security.

[rb336]

Ia young black man wearing a hoodie is not enough.

I'm more afraid of middle-aged white men wearing hoodies and sunglasses and carrying packages...

[maxx]

A petition from the Color of Change:

Three weeks ago, 17-year old Trayvon Martin was gunned down by self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. Despite Zimmerman admitting to following, confronting, and killing Trayvon, he has yet to be arrested or charged with any crime.¹
Just minutes before Trayvon was killed, Zimmerman had called police stating that Trayvon looked "suspicious." Trayvon was unarmed and walking back to his father's home in Sanford, Florida when Zimmerman accosted him.
At the crime scene, Sanford police botched their questioning of Zimmerman, refused to take the full statements of witnesses, and pressured neighbors to side with the shooter's claim of self-defense.² As it turns out, Sanford's police department has a history of failing to hold perpetrators accountable for violent acts against Black victims, and the police misconduct in Trayvon's case exemplifies the department's systemic mishandling of such investigations.³ And now, the State Attorney's office has rubber-stamped the Sanford police's non-investigation, claiming that there is not enough evidence to support even a manslaughter conviction.⁴
Trayvon's family and hundreds of thousands of people around the country are demanding justice.⁵ Please join us in calling on the Department of Justice to take over the case, arrest Trayvon's killer, and launch an independent investigation into the Sanford police department's unwillingness to protect Trayvon's civil rights. It takes just a moment: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/Trayvon

[Crumbled_pavement]

I'm more afraid of middle-aged white men wearing hoodies and sunglasses and carrying packages...

Gun them down. Should be legal. You're just defending yourself.

[wolverine]

This tragedy is sickening. I hope the Martin family finds justice. I can't believe there's still people out there who are on the fence of this issue. By the day, we find out more about Zimmerman and his story of "self defense" is sounding more bogus.