What The Hell Is Wrong With America

What the hell else can be said after watching a grand jury refuse to bring a (white) cop to court on obvious evidence he used an ILLEGAL CHOKE HOLD to kill a (black) man on the mere suspicion of selling individual cigarettes on the streets of Staten Island.

"No reasonable cause"?!

There's video of it, where Eric Garner is arguing about what's happening to him but being non-violent about it, still getting caught in the cop's chokehold and begging for life gasping "I... Can't... Breathe..."

The official coroner's report came back as a homicide.

What part of "Illegal choke hold" is getting overlooked here?

That old "joke" that a grand jury - basically a tool of prosecutors to sort out the evidence useful to bring charges on a suspect - would indict a ham sandwich?  That's two grand juries in a row refusing to bring a white cop to trial for killing a black man.

That's two different prosecuting attorneys - both of whom deserve to get disbarred for their bias or ineptitude, take your pick - who basically controlled grand juries into doing nothing.

That's two groups of fellow Americans either buying into the "Blue Wall" excuse granting cops full immunity to kill all in their path, or else refusing to see the injustice of not bringing killers to any accounting for the lives they've taken.  Lives that happened to be black men.  Lives taken by those who happen to be white.

Anybody who claims we don't lynch blacks in this country anymore ought to take a look at the body count the last 5 years.

I've said this before: Our cops are not supposed to be executioners.  Our cops are supposed to follow an oath to Protect And Serve.  It's their job to bring the suspects to trial and have the juries and judges determine the guilt.  It is not the jobs of cops to execute with lethal force.  Our cops do NOT have a license to kill.

There are so many legal and effective means to arrest anybody without resorting to pulling out a gun or a taser or a baton or the use of a lethal hold.  GOOD cops do that every day of the year, and we don't hear about those arrests.

What does it tell you that we're hearing and witnessing more and more BAD cops on a weekly, now daily basis, beating the crap out of people, smashing in car windows, blowing up baby cribs, and outright shooting 12-year-olds the second they arrive on scene?  We have one cop shooting a teenager even after other cops - GOOD cops - had stabilized the confrontation, saying "We don't have time for this."  We have cops shooting a guy holding a BB gun in a Wal-Mart, all because some jackass claimed the guy was threatening people with it (in-store video proved he wasn't).  In the only good news out of all this police misconduct, there was a recent incident where the cops arrested and pepper sprayed a black foster child in his own home.  If you can call that good news.

And now our cops are out in the streets blockading the marches and protests, now in New York City as the outrage over Garner's death takes over the city, much like Brown's death took over Ferguson.  

We've got prosecutors who won't hold anybody accountable for death after death after death, after maiming after wounding after false arrest after false reports after lie after lie after more lies.  We've got police departments arming themselves with firepower that matches our army, rolling heavy through our own communities as they escalate the violence trying to impose order in response to the injustice they're refusing to recognize in their own actions.

Don't be surprised if our nation's faith - not just Black folks who'd figured out a while back that their lives don't matter, but Whites who genuinely want this nation to work for ALL its citizens - in the very concept of JUSTICE is dying in the streets just like our own citizens.

What the hell is wrong with America tonight?  We're living under a cloud of fear, living with a legal system skewing more against its own people.

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At What Point Can The Stupidity of Racism End?

(Update: Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar linked this blog to the 2014 Jon Swift Memorial Roundup.  Hi, everybody!  Please leave comments if you want, and if this is your first visit here, please take a look around.  Io Saturnalia and here's hoping the next year isn't going to be as sh-tty as this one...)

It's easier to express rage during a round of Twitter messages.  It's been more than a week since the shooting death of yet another unarmed black teen by an angry guy with a gun... only this time the angry guy with the gun was a cop.

I don't want to pity Mr. Ta-Nehisi Coates.  But every time there's been a shooting involving an unarmed black teen and an armed angry guy (usually white), he's been called to make comment:

...It will not do to point out the rarity of the destruction of your body by the people whom you pay to protect it. As Gene Demby has noted, destruction is merely the superlative form of a dominion whose prerogatives include friskings, detainings, beatings, and humiliations. All of this is common to black people. All of this is old for black people. No one is held accountable. The body of Michael Brown was left in the middle of the street for four hours. It can not be expected that anyone will be held accountable.

We are being told that Michael Brown attacked an armed man and tried to take his gun. The people who are telling us this hail from that universe where choke-holds are warm-fuzzies, where boys discard their Skittles yelling, "You're gonna die tonight," and possess the power to summon and banish shotguns from the ether. These are the necessary myths of our country, and without them we are subject to the awful specter of history, and that is just too much for us to bear.

And Coates has been called too often the last few years to this role as the Speaker To Unspoken History. It must be tiring.

What's been horrifying in the wake of Michael Brown's murder has been the combination of arrogance out of a police force over-reacting to the protests by the Ferguson community, and the willful eagerness of the racists (there is no other word to describe those people) who were and still are quick to demean, defame, and demonize the victim as well as the mostly black neighborhood in which he lived and died.  As that Salon.com/AlterNet article by Steven Rosenfeld notes, "the victim becomes the suspect."

It came so easy to the haters on Twitter.  I lost count of the number of tweets calling Brown a "thug", and claiming the city and county police were in their rights to break up the street protests using any violent force available.  I saw about fifteen, maybe twenty different tweeters bringing up the argument about how all the "white-on-black" protesters keep ignoring the "black-on-black violence", despite the evidence that, yes, black communities ARE protesting such violence and it's just the haters and the mainstream media are the ones ignoring that issue in the first place.  And I'd like these critics to give some public time and effort decrying "white-on-white" crime please and thank you...

What's at argument here, what's at stake, is the ongoing problem where a powerful governmental agency - responsible towards serving and protecting the public - is abusing such power when dealing with the poor and disenfranchised public they're supposed to serve.  What's at stake here is as much the militarizing of our nation's varied law enforcement offices as much as the dehumanization of entire communities.  Where the police lining up with tear gas and body armor are calling their unarmed civilian targets "f-cking animals", less about how those protesters were acting - most of them just walking with their "hands up" calling "don't shoot" - and more about the skin those protesters wore.

The threat of racism among our law enforcement agencies has been and continues to be a serious problem.  The racism in our nation's history, and our nation's current psyche, continues to be a serious problem.

At what point, haters, at what point do you f-cking let go of all that hate in your heart?  At what point do you stop the fear, recognize that the problems with our communities come NOT from skin color but because people - white and black and brown - are poor?  At what point do you give up the f-cking obsession of some southern conservative pipe dream of returning to an 1850 "utopia" where everyone knew their place by the power of who held the whip?

I am serious.  Dear Ferguson PD: when your fan base is made up of the KKK (!) you are clearly on the wrong side of history.

This entire week has been an exercise in watching the police enforce the unenforceable - the outrage of a community - through violent militarized tactics that even actual military veterans decried as overkill.  (The quote that's stuck with me all week, and needs to be said here, from the Business Insider article: "We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone.")  At only one point had calmer heads prevailed: when after a violent police-instigated crackdown on Wednesday night during that first week went global on the news, it forced the state governor to order the local police to stand down and sent in state troopers to handle the crowds.  The state law officers went in that Thursday with bullhorns instead of batons, standard patrol uniforms instead of body armor, and hugs instead of tear gas.  That night saw little if any violence.

What the hell happened after that Thursday?  Other than the Ferguson PD coming back with accusations that Brown was wanted for shoplifting cigars at a local store, making another attempt at defaming the victim to justify the shooting.  An accusation that quickly developed holes when the store-owner revealed he never called in a theft, that the police never even showed up for the video until that same Friday, that the timeline and earlier testimony was that the shooting cop Darren Wilson couldn't even have known Brown might have been a suspect, and that a subsequent review of that video showed Brown actually tried paying for those cigars.

In the wake of all that, the Ferguson and county police went back to their heavy-handed body-armor arrest-all-reporters tactics.  Against all evidence that Soft Power efforts - engaging the protesters on an equal level - work, they went back to the violent confrontations.  The only reason why I can figure out is racism: the Ferguson police want this fight, they want to debase and demolish their own citizenry because they can't imagine handling the issue - them vs. the black community - any other way.

Is that racism ever going to go away?  Is that blind stupidity - pushing them to shoot tear gas at kids and families, most of them unable to avoid it all because they live there - ever going to go away?

We should be rolling lighter than this through our own communities.  What the hell is wrong with us?

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From Ta-Nehisi, Not Just For the Lost Battalion But For Every American, Every Son

If I could repost this article in its entirety I would.  But it's better to follow the link and read it yourself.

Ta-Nehisi Coates interviews the mother of Jordan Davis.  For the interview, he brings along his own son, 13 years old and black and pretty much in the same unsettling reality that Jordan and Trayvon lived (and died).

Last Thursday, I took my son to meet Lucia McBath, because he is 13, about the age when a black boy begins to directly understand what his country thinks of him. His parents cannot save him. His parents cannot save both his person and his humanity. At 13, I learned that whole streets were prohibited to me, that ways of speaking, walking, and laughing made me a target. That is because within the relative peace of America, great violence—institutional, interpersonal, existential—marks the black experience. The progeny of the plundered were all around me in West Baltimore—were, in fact, me. No one was amused. If I were to carve out some peace myself, I could not be amused either. I think I lost some of myself out there, some of the softness that was rightfully mine, to a set of behavioral codes for addressing the block. I think these talks that we have with our sons—how to address the police, how not to be intimidating to white people, how to live among the singularly plundered—kill certain parts of them which are as wonderful as anything. I think the very tools which allow us to walk through the world, crush our wings and dash the dream of flight.

I am white.  I grew up getting The Talk on how to behave with girls and how to obey the traffic laws and how to avoid drunken fights and that was it.  I was never lectured to be afraid of being hunted by my own neighbors or other adults the way Ta-Nehisi and his son had to be lectured.

I told her that I was stunned by her grace after the verdict. I told her the verdict greatly angered me. I told her that the idea that someone on that jury thought it plausible there was a gun in the car baffled me. I told her it was appalling to consider the upshot of the verdict—had Michael Dunn simply stopped shooting and only fired the shots that killed Jordan Davis, he might be free today.

She said, "It baffles our mind too. Don’t think that we aren’t angry. Don’t think that I am not angry. Forgiving Michael Dunn doesn't negate what I’m feeling and my anger. And I am allowed to feel that way. But more than that I have a responsibility to God to walk the path He's laid. In spite of my anger, and my fear that we won’t get the verdict that we want, I am still called by the God I serve to walk this out."

What happened to Jordan Davis wasn't Jordan's fault.  It's not Jordan's fault Michael Dunn was carrying his gun, it's not Jordan's fault that Dunn couldn't control his own anger when he called on Jordan's friends to turn down that loud music, it wasn't Jordan who pulled a trigger it was an angry man with a gun and a crazy broken law giving him license to open fire.  There are kids playing loud music everywhere.  They are driving in their parents' cars up and down these roads with the windows down and laying out a bass that shakes the surrounding car windows.  Some of them are white.  I don't see anyone at the gas stations shouting at them to turn the damn music down.

She stood. It was time to go. I am not objective. I gave her a hug. I told her I wanted the world to see her, and to see Jordan. She said she thinks I want the world to see "him." She was nodding to my son. She added, "And him representing all of us." He was sitting there just as I have taught him—listening, not talking.

Now she addressed him, "You exist," she told him. "You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid of being you."

She gave my son a hug and then went upstairs to pack.

The only difference between me at 13 and Ta-Nehisi's son at 13 is the color of our skin.  That and maybe whatever geek thing he's into that I'm not.  The only difference between me and Trayvon Martin at 17 was the skin color, and that he preferred Skittles over M&Ms.  The only difference between me and Jordan Davis was the skin.  And that I had Led Zeppelin blasting at top volume instead of Beyonce.

I didn't have to live with the fear of some angry adult blasting away at me because of who I was.

What the hell is wrong with us as a nation that we let fear dictate what we do?  That we let our anger get the better of us?  That we have some people who think themselves privileged enough to sell that fear and anger to get away with it?

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Why Stand Your Ground Is a Terrible Law

The weekend news has been how a Jacksonville FL jury held shooter Michael Dunn in the Jordan Davis killing guilty of three counts of attempted murder for firing at the three teen friends with Davis that cold night of November 2012... and how that same jury locked up into a mistrial over Davis' own death.

It defies logic that Dunn will be held accountable for the murder attempts he missed... and yet was pretty much let go over the murder he did succeed in committing. (the state prosecutor's office says it will retry on the murder charge)

But there's a reason logic is getting stomped on here: it's because of a poorly-designed, open-ended, free-for-all free-for-gunowners law called Stand Your Ground (SYG).

The impact this law has had on Florida and other states applying SYG is pretty shocking.  Shooting deaths have gone up in states where the shooters claim self-defense under SYG.  Worse, about a third (34 percent) of the shootings when it's white shooter/black victim are deemed justifiable, while only three percent of black shooter/white victim are deemed justifiable.  That this law exposes the raw nerve of race is hard for me to focus on at the moment, and better explained by better writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates (please follow the link to what he wrote).  I'm better off ranting instead about how stupid and destructive SYG is.

Under the old laws regarding self-defense, it relied a lot on location - your own home or workplace where you have an expectation of self-defense - and it relied on the situation where you or someone else were threatened with bodily harm and there was no other recourse (no escape route or method to contact the proper authorities).  Stand Your Ground now allows someone carrying a firearm (and an anger management problem the size of Mount Doom) to go first for their gun and open fire under a "reasonable" expectation of fearing for their life, even when there are clear alternatives to blasting away in Vigilante Mode.

It's a bad law because it's basically a license for an aggressive, angry gunowner to go after someone and shoot that other person dead.  And then that gunowner can turn around and claim self-defense because he "feared for his own safety."  Regardless of whether or not the victim was genuinely a threat.  And sadly enough, the victim was never that big a threat.

Look at Dunn's testimony.  He's the one with the gun, getting off 10 shots and killing Davis in the process.  Dunn claims he "saw" Davis with a shotgun but the police found no evidence there was any weapon in the car at all.  Yet we're supposed to trust Dunn's testimony because he's the one sitting in the courtroom booth.  Meanwhile, we'll never hear Davis' side of the matter because Davis is dead, much like Trayvon Martin is dead and we'll never really know what happened the night George Zimmerman shot him dead.

Because we can't trust a word of what Dunn or Zimmerman claim, because it's in their own interests to make themselves look the victim.  And because they've got SYG giving them clearance to admit they "feared" for their own safety regardless of the situation.  Especially when - in both Dunn and Zimmerman's cases - the shooters were the ones who escalated in their own anger those situations into shooting deaths.

Are we going to trust the word of the 71-year-old who shot a man texting his babysitter (checking on a child at home) while at the Wesley Chapel movie theater that he was afraid for his life?  Under normal circumstances, the 71-year-old or anyone else upset that a cell phone was in use during the start of the movie would have gone to an usher or theater manager to complain (I did that once.  Guess what?  IT WORKED).  Under SYG, the 71-year-old stood there, let a box of popcorn get thrown in his face, and pull out his concealed gun to shoot dead the person who angered him.

He was threatened with popcorn.  The guy with the gun was threatened with popcorn, and shot the guy who threw it at him.  And now the 71-year-old packing heat gets to go before a jury to explain how he feared for his safety because popcorn was in his face.

Meanwhile the ones with actual bullets in them - Martin, Davis, a 43-year-old man with a fatherless child waiting at home - lie there dead, and what law speaks for them when Stand Your Ground trumps logic?  When it trumps common sense?

The law needs to go.  The courts need to rule it unconstitutional because it violates the victims' - usually unarmed - rights to due process (a presumption of innocence).  They need to overturn SYG because it's become a form of legalized lynching where angry white guys are shooting blacks over questionable slights (Trayvon Martin had every right to walk through his father's own neighborhood, for God's sake).  The legislatures need to stop passing these laws that violate public safety at the expense of a gun lobby that wants to conceal-carry wherever they want and pretty much shoot anybody they (don't) like.

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Another Moment In The Annals of Angry Guy Syndrome

In the "This Should NOT Be Surprising Anyone" category, George Zimmerman - he who shot Trayvon Martin for the sin of walking at night wearing a hoodie - has been arrested for yet another domestic violence incident:

George Zimmerman was charged Monday with assault after deputies were called to the home where he lived with his girlfriend, who claimed he pointed a shotgun at her during an argument, authorities said.

Zimmerman pushed the woman out of the house and barricaded the door with furniture, Chief Deputy Dennis Lemma said at a news conference hours after the arrest. The girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, provided deputies with a key to the home and they were able to push the door that had been barricaded.

Zimmerman, from before the Trayvon Martin shooting and even after his acquittal, has shown a serious habit of "expressing himself" in a rather violent, confrontational fashion:

• In September of this year, he visited his estranged wife's home and was accused of threatening her and her father with violence, reportedly with the gun on his possession.  The investigation stalled due to lack of evidence.
• Zimmerman and his wife were separated at the time of the Trayvon shooting, following a fight between the couple.  She filed for divorce once the trial ended, with the proceedings on hold following the September incident.
• Zimmerman has been ticketed on three separate occasions for traffic violations, mostly speeding, since the acquittal.
• In July 2005, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest during an incident involving underage drinking, attacking an undercover cop who was trying to arrest Zimmerman's friend.
• The following month, Zimmerman's then-fiance filed a restraining order against him for domestic violence. Zimmerman filed his own restraining order against her.

And remember, these are the incidents that got the cops involved.

Every one of these incidents fit into a pattern of persistent behavior common with the Angry Guy Syndrome: a confrontational personality, issues with the women in his life leading up to domestic violence reports, a recklessness with respecting rules (such as traffic laws), a level of arrogance that makes him act like he's above the law.

And above all, a love of weapons and an eagerness to have them on him whenever he gets into a fight with someone like his ex-wife or current girlfriend.

The 911 phone calls have already been released: the girlfriend's as well as Zimmerman's.  Zimmerman calling just as the cops showed up to answer the woman's earlier call.  You gotta listen to Zimmerman as he's telling his version of events.  Except you gotta be wondering "why isn't he talking to the cops that are already there?"  And the answer is obvious: it's called "gaming the refs".  Zimmerman knows the tapes always get released to the media, and so he puts out his own 911 call, knowing if he does it the right way he can paint himself as the victim of his "crazy girlfriend".

At this point should anyone even trust him anymore (not off-topic: Zimmerman's lawyer during the shooting trial quit on him after not getting paid)?  Zimmerman keeps getting involved in these incidents, keeps painting himself as the victim.  But here's the thing.  All of these domestic violence calls, all of these traffic violations, all of the times Zimmerman has been confronted by the law, there has been one constant.

George Zimmerman.  George Zimmerman being angry.

This is a trend that cannot be explained away.  This is a constant, an ever-fixed mark of this guy's personality.  Combine it with his love of guns, and we have a troubling threat to other people's safety.

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Quick Notes From the Sunshine State Asylum

While I'm heading into Post #500 (this one will be #493), I feel the need to pass along a few good news, bad news, WTF news from the great state of Florida.

• The Miami-Dade government made a "last-minute" move to NOT make massive cuts into the county library system by pulling funds from a "rainy day" reserve.  This is good... for a year, at which point the issue of funding libraries will come back up again.  Hint to Miami-Dade: try a bond issue, it worked wonders in neighboring Broward County over a decade ago.
• Rick "F-ck Florida" Scott issued a directive this week to county health care offices that the "navigators" made available by Obamacare to assist state residents figure out their health care plans would not be able to perform such outreach in those health care offices.  Essentially making it harder for the navigators to do anything to help anyone.  There's already been push-back by one of the counties that's gotten direct funding to hire some navigators, but it's pretty clear Scott and his ilk are doing everything possible to obstruct the health care reform efforts.
• Speaking of Rick "Too Self-Serving To Know He's Being Dumb" Scott, he had a fundraiser scheduled in the form of a $25,000 per person alligator hunt.  The campaign had to quickly cancel it not just because of the suddenly intense media interest in the story but because it turns out that alligator hunting licenses were strictly limited and only gained by lottery system.  You'd think someone in his office would have Farking done some research on this.
• George Zimmerman is back in the news regarding a possible domestic violence incident with his separated-seeking-divorce wife.  There's been conflicting stories, a damaged iPad, and an exasperated sheriff quickly tired of Zimmerman's sh-t.  For anyone who had a betting pool on when Zimmerman was gonna snap and do something dumber and more violent, it looks like anyone with September or October of this very year is in line for the win.
• This joker - the one who burned a Quran and started a global riot in the process - was arrested this 9/11 anniversary time while he was en route to a Polk County park to set fire to 2999 more Qurans.  Turns out preachers gotta answer to secular law, and it's a felony to transport gasoline in improper containers.

Okay, so.  For the seven readers... well actually for the seventeen readers now that I've got some Crooks & Liars audience members... still keeping an eye on this site, any suggestions for Post #500?

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Anniversary: I Have a Dream And What It Means Today

Today is the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington For Jobs and Freedom that took place back in 1963 (seven years before I was born).  One of the largest protests formed in American history - with roughly 200,000 to 300,000 in attendance - it was a combination of two major issues: civil rights and economic rights.  .

When Reverend Martin Luther King Jr spoke, it wasn't immediately recognized in the papers even though the television coverage gave it a lot of attention.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! 

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. 

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: 

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring! 

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true...

And so where are we 50 years later?

In terms of social equality across the board, we're not there yet.

In terms of economic equality, given the Great Recession we're in, we as a whole nation - white, black, Hispanic, Asian, native, man, woman - are royally screwed if we're not in the upper 1 Percent bracket.

In terms of electoral equality, we as a nation and blacks and Hispanics and the college-age and a lot of women are well and truly screwed.  The Supreme Court just defanged the Voting Rights Act and a good number of states - North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and even Pennsylvania now for God's sake - where the social conservatives (aka Far Right Republicans) hold all the power are going out of their way to make it harder for people to vote using arguments about voting fraud that have no evidence.

In terms of day-to-day, the crime of Walking While Black has led to Fourth Amendment violations and in some cases open hunting season.

In terms of America becoming the great nation it keeps telling itself it can be, we're still stuck where we were 50 years ago.  Electing a black man to the Presidency seems like another country now, doesn't it.

We can be better than this if we as a nation can give up the hate and fear that's driving a lot of the wingnut bullsh-t.  We're living a dream that's all wrong, more nightmare than hope.  We as a nation have got to wake up from that.  It doesn't have to be a dream: it has to be just freaking common sense and decency.

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What Happened To Trayvon Was Not a Flaw, It Was a Feature

Referring to what Mr. Coates had to say on the matter:

In trying to assess the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, two seemingly conflicting truths emerge for me. The first is that based on the case presented by the state, and based on Florida law, George Zimmerman should not have been convicted of second degree murder or manslaughter. The second is that the killing of Trayvon Martin is a profound injustice... The injustice inherent in the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was not authored by a jury given a weak case. The jury's performance may be the least disturbing aspect of this entire affair. The injustice was authored by a country which has taken as its policy, for the lionshare of its history, to erect a pariah class. The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman is not an error in programming. It is the correct result of forces we set in motion years ago and have done very little to arrest.One need only look the criminalization of Martin across the country. Perhaps you have been lucky enough to not receive the above "portrait" of Trayvon Martin and its accompanying text. The portrait is actually of a 32-year old man. Perhaps you were lucky enough to not see the Trayvon Martin imagery used for target practice (by law enforcement, no less.) Perhaps you did not see the iPhone games. Or maybe you missed the theory presently being floated by Zimmerman's family that Martin was a gun-runner and drug-dealer in training, that texts and tweets he sent mark him as a criminal in waiting. Or the theory floated that the mere donning of a hoodie marks you a thug, leaving one wondering why this guy is a criminal and this one is not.We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, andred shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction ofRosewood and the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d'etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson's love of freedom, but none of his affection for white supremacy...

An observer from Slate about the wackiness of Florida, and how the legal system in Florida isn't so much as wacky as it is screwed:

It doesn't help that the same prosecutor who lost the Zimmerman case recently won a conviction against Marissa Alexander, a black woman who fired a warning shot to chase off her abusive ex-husband, hurting no one. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Twenty years for a warning shot against a known abuser versus no time at all for killing an unarmed teenager leaves you scratching your head and wondering if justice is not just blind but also insane...I spent four years covering criminal courts in Florida. I covered every kind of case, from misdemeanors to murder. One thing I learned is that you can never predict what a jury might do once it’s locked away to deliberate. I covered one trial where the defendant was accused of bigamy, and his defense was: Sorry, I forgot I was married already. He walked...
Prosecutors around the state boast of their high conviction rates, but those stellar records tend to be built primarily on successful plea deals, not trials. And frankly, some of their trial successes turn out to be the result of flimsy or faulty evidence—Florida leads the nation in the number of death row inmates who were subsequently exonerated...People who work in the court system can blame the legislature for the way our laws are worded. For instance, Florida's “Stand Your Ground” law was based on a distortion of a single anecdote, and it has subsequently allowed drug dealers to avoid murder charges and gang members to walk free... 

We've got a serious problem with our legal system.  We've had a serious problem for decades, and we're still not addressing the issues of fairness or justice.  And it's not just the racial animus of the legal system, it's the aggressiveness of a criminal defense system that can go out of its' way to "blame the victim" like the way Zimmerman's lawyers went after Trayvon - what else is "Stand Your Ground" but a calculated method of blaming the guy you killed "oh if only he didn't force me to pack a gun and blow his heart out his chest" - not just for murder cases but also rape cases - a lot of rape victims don't even pursue legal recourse out of fear they'll be slut-shamed at trial.

Balancing the right of a defendant to a fair trial ought to be balanced by the right of the victim to gain (or regain) some semblance of justice for the crime that took place.  

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This Is What Fear And a Gun Creates: Trayvon Martin Is Dead.

Trayvon Martin's intent: walk to a store and back for a bag of Skittles and a bottle of tea. George Zimmerman's intent: follow a black kid walking through a neighborhood while carrying his gun. Confrontation ensues. Zimmerman shoots Martin. 
Zimmerman gets acquitted because of "reasonable doubt". Trayvon Martin is dead.
Try to remember this: Trayvon Martin had a bag of Skittles and a bottle of tea. Martin was not committing any crime. He was walking home through his neighborhood. Zimmerman still chases after him. And Zimmerman shoots him dead.
As a teenager I spent a lot of time biking and walking through my neighborhood, but I never had some freaked-out adult chasing after me with a gun fearing for his life. Maybe because, gee I dunno, I was white. Who's to say? Certainly not Trayvon Martin. Because he's dead now.
It is now legal in Florida, and pretty much the rest of the nation, for terrified angry white guys to shoot young black kids walking through neighborhoods.
This is not justice.

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