In a disgusting if not surprising development, George Zimmerman has been found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin. For coverage, see here.
Discuss, post links, etc below.
EDIT: This is a troll-free thread. If you’re coming here to gloat over the verdict, to use the verdict as an excuse to trash women or feminism, or post racist garbage, don’t. If you want to argue that the verdict was just and/or we live in a post-racial society, go somewhere else. None of us are in the mood for that bullshit.
No, no, nope, not having it, no.
You do not get to go start a confrontation and then claim self-defense. No, Florida does not have a duty to retreat but rather a stand your ground (not touching that, no, nope, not happening), but even that doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t cover going out to find ground to stand.
I think I’m going to hide in my room as long as I possibly can, if my family gets all right wing pro-gun racist…*screams*
No, nope, no.
*passes the whiskey to Shaun* (hey, is shortening your nym to that ok? Free feel to yell at me if not!)
May that murderer and the ones who excused him step on this:
https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6987581184/hF50C6C27/
This is complete and utter bullshit.
Hit post too soon.
I wish I was surprised by this verdict.
San Francisco
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/13/100s-gather-for-zimmerman-verdict-protest-march-in-san-francisco/
And of course the authorities are taking that protest quite calmly, but freaking out about Oakland, because what this situation really needed was for people to pile some more racism on top of the already-existing racism.
http://www.freep.com/article/20130712/NEWS07/307120079/
People were waiting for Fox to chime in with bonus assholery? Here you go.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/07/12/is-george-zimmerman-trial-being-used-to-market-fruitvale-station/
Shaun is actually my name. It’s perfectly fine.
*evilly feminizes whiskey with ginger ale and limes*
There aren’t even words.
I know this isn’t fair to Florida, and I don’t care.
“The transit officer who shot Grant claimed was convicted of involuntary manslaughter…”
Wtf Fox? Get an editor! Wtf does that mean?! Are their rogue “claimed”s falling from the sky and one just happened to land in your sentence?
This is me refusing to actually read it btw.
https://twitter.com/brfreed/status/356284490357805057
It speaks to my idiotic naivety that through this whole farce I was still supremely confident that Zimmerman would be found guilty. Fuck life right now. This just fuckin shat all over such a nice day. I want to express some words of support for his family and friends but everything sounds so pithy because what the fuck can you say to them?
So fucking true. Anyway, just want to say that even near-toxic levels of cynicism about the racism and bias in our judicial system does not make one immune to feeling shitty about this verdict, because I guess I couldn’t help thinking that maybe this time it would be different…
And you’re not an idiot for thinking things might be different, Shadow, just a decent human being.
OK, I’m going to stop treating this thread like my own personal Twitter feed.
I can’t even order my thoughts. Really. I always joke that the cynicism through which I view the world is often inadequate, but that’s what it really is this time. I was so hoping that the world would prove me wrong, that this time my cynicism really would be too much. I don’t know why *this* is the one that got me, but I really just can’t.
Man, gonna get all emotional and shit. I’m black so maybe all this whining is a little less melodramatic.
I think the verdict reminds me of why I became an anarchist. I became a political radical because I was completely morally disenchanted with american society and at the utter moral emptiness of american values. We glorify the rich and prosperous and we seem to froth up in a rage at the weak. “Welfare” is a goddam slur when the word simply means helping out those who can’t help themselves, we seem to have found our collective moral compass in a goddam gutter or something. All this christianity the politicians seem to go on about seems to dissipate entirely when it comes to things which actually matter.
I think that this verdict is evidence of moral decline, of a real lack of humanity in american society. To be honest, I never followed the case and thought Zimmerman was going to get convicted on the basis of refuting every shithead gun owner’s macho man quasinazi fantasies of mowing down hordes of poor black people. Thus, I always placed this whole trial far outside my personal field of vision, didn’t talk about it and I always changed the subject if someone brought it up since I thought that Zim was going to jail for manslaughter or fucking something. I guess not.
This is getting long so I’ll say this, I think this is because we all think we’re middle-class and we all seem to take great pride in this pseudo-fact. In britain, objectively poor people don’t like immigrants because they think they’re taking “british” jobs and “british” social housing (they’re not). Over here, we hate immigrants because they have “anchor babies”. We are all so enthralled with the inhumanly myopic values of the sorts of people who live in gated-communities that we’ve all deluded ourselves into thinking that being three paychecks and a credit card default away from homelessness means you can finally bitch about “your tax dollars” going to welfare queens or rednecks or chavs or hispanic maids or muslamic rayguns or whatever caricature of the poor is popular atm.
Personally, I blame the lack of real community in society, which leads us to know more about the ridiculous and stupid lives of TV show characters than about our neighbors – only a society addicted to the absolutely myopic privileged suburban nonsense on TV can sympathize with killing black kids (hey he was only one year older than me too that’s nice to think about) armed with skittles because “thugs”. I think that if we believed more in working-class solidarity and less in individualism and in the militant amorality which is woven into the national fabric this wouldn’t have happened. I think this happened for the same reason MTV, Britney Spears, Fox News, rich assholes, laid off workers, global warming, and YouTube comment sections happen: because capitalism is a big bag of dicks that turns people into big bags of dicks and turns entire societies into a big bags of dicks.
Sorry if this didn’t make sense ‘cos I don’t think it did. It’s 2 AM I’m tired, I’m upset and I need to get over this.
TL;DR when my birthday’s comes up I’m getting a hoodie.
You hope and hope that somewhere, sometime, there’ll be a verdict that has some resemblance to justice in cases like this …
I can’t believe there are actually people fixated on the “legal correctness” of this verdict.
This is just horrible.
So disgusted and sad right now. And, yes, shocked. And even surprised. I was worried that a conviction of second degree murder might not happen, but once the prosecution managed to add manslaughter as an option for the jury, I was confident that he’d at least get that.
My sweetie, on the other hand, called this from day 1. Before the trial even started. Heck, before the trial even got scheduled. No surprise there, just a sad, resigned sigh.
Guess which one of us is black?
I guess I still have a lot to learn. I wish that I didn’t have to. And I hate that my sweetie ever had to learn it, and has to live with that kind of devastating wisdom every day. I can’t imagine what it must be like.
@ Ally
You too, huh? My initial urge was to snap back about this really not being the right time for that kind of crap. The laws invoked in this case are shitty laws that need to be changed, but even taking that into account if anyone thinks this would have gone the same way if the races had been reversed I’m going to have to quote the old cliche about there being a fool born every minute at them.
UGH!
George Zimmerman has a history of domestic violence. And men with a history of domestic violence are 46% of mass murderers. And more frequently commit murder than other men. WHY ARE WE NOT JUST LOCKING THEM THE FUCK UP? People *knew* this would happen, but DV just doesn’t fucking count, even though it predicts murder.
/endrant/
Sending hugs to J if they are wanted.
If anyone would like some brain bleach, have a look at Grumpy Cat on Hoyden about Town.
PEOPLE. UGH.
I’m trying to leave my African American friends alone tonight, this shit, while upsetting, isn’t about me. BUT now some woman charged into a FB thread of my obviously upset friend talking about the importance of standard of proof in law and getting butthurt after my friend EXPLICITY said to give it a rest. Her response? “I’m just defending myself like George Zimmerman haa.”
What the fuck is wrong with people?!
/rant
Here here, J.
Now what to do about it? I imagine many of the problems in American society that can be attributed to *Western decadence* will take care of themselves as China takes over America’s role as the great imperial world power and America descends into the netherworld of total economic dependency and a second Cold War.
It would be sort of a delicious irony, were the Chinese to end up being better capitalists than Americans and America to outdo China at being an authoritarian regime.
That’s a big part of what the MRM is about, trying to get society/the legal system not to connect the dots between shitty behavior a. and the fact that people who’ve already done it are more likely to end up also committing shitty behaviors b. and c.