[Vision2020] Vision2020 Digest, Vol 85, Issue 96
Paul Rumelhart
godshatter at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 15 13:27:23 PDT 2013
First of all, I'm not defending George Zimmerman. I've made it clear here on the Viz and elsewhere that I think he was a fool for following Martin. I am, however, defending the jury's verdict. They don't get the luxury of doing God's will, or deciding on a narrative, or anything else but judging the evidence. To prove second degree murder in Florida, they would have had to prove that Zimmerman had a "depraved mind regardless of human life". The evidence didn't show that beyond a reasonable doubt. They would have also had to disprove his "self-defense" defense, which is a valid defense against second degree murder in Florida. They didn't (in my opinion of course) disprove that beyond a reasonable doubt, either.
You are judging him to have been "looking for trouble and when he saw a young Black man, he believed he had found it". Maybe you don't need evidence for judgements like that, but I wonder how you think you know the truth. From all I've seen, he was trying to protect his community from a string of burglaries that had been happening, and got attacked for his overly-aggressive tactics. I don't know if that's any more true than your take on it, but I'm not the one calling his actions "hateful". "Reckless" I can get behind.
Paul
I'll be out of town this weekend, starting Thursday, so we'll have to have a beer some other time.
________________________________
From: Keely Emerine-Mix <siyocreo at live.com>
To: "vision2020 at moscow.com" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Vision2020 Digest, Vol 85, Issue 96
Paul, I am twelve hours from having arrived home after a very stressful two-week trip, and I leave for Pittsburgh in nine days. I'll be writing a lot aut this and would invite you to look at my blog for my thoughts on this. What I would really prefer is to sit down with you and discuss, face to face and congenially, how it is you could possibly defend George Zimmerman or the jury's verdict. I mean this sincerely; the beer's on me. Give me 'til Thursday to recover. You can email me and I hope you do take me up on this.
And, in case I failed to make my dismay clear, I am unapologetic and unequivocal in my belief that the murderer George Zimmerman may have been found not guilty by a jury, but he is in no way an innocent man. He went looking for trouble, and when he saw a young Black man, he believed he had found it. The God I believe in sees all and knows all, and the only way George Zimmerman will ever be found to be innocent is if he confesses his sin to the Lord Jesus, from whom forgiveness for any and every wrong is available. Fruit of that repentance would, to me, require that he eagerly and humbly devote the rest of his life to remedying the effects of his hateful, reckless behavior.
Until that happens, George Zimmerman is guilty as hell of killing Trayvon Martin, and no jury verdict in the world changes that.
Please contact me . . .
Keely
www.keely-prevailingwinds.com
> From: vision2020-request at moscow.com
> Subject: Vision2020 Digest, Vol 85, Issue 96
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:59:17 -0700
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Once upon a very long time ago (Rosemary Huskey)
> 2. Re: Trayvon Martin rally? (Tom Hansen)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:45:06 -0700
> From: "Rosemary Huskey" <donaldrose at cpcinternet.com>
> To: "'Moscow Vision 2020'" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Subject: [Vision2020] Once upon a very long time ago
> Message-ID: <001d01ce818b$74b2b870$5e182950$@com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> I had a black seventeen year old son. Eugene Robinson writes for all of us
> who loved and parent(ed) black children and black sons in particular. And,
> I thank and bless him for his eloquent words.
>
> Rose Huskey
>
>
>
> Trayvon Martin Never Had A Chance
>
> By Eugene Robinson The Washington Post
>
> First Published 2 hours ago . Updated 1 hour ago
>
> WASHINGTON -- Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We
> should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed
> him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.
>
> Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable,
> expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about
> race that we desperately need to have -- but probably, as in the past, will
> try our best to avoid.
>
> George Zimmerman's acquittal was set in motion on Feb. 26, 2012, before
> Martin's body was cold. When Sanford, Fla., police arrived on the scene,
> they encountered a grown man who acknowledged killing an unarmed 17-year-old
> boy. They did not arrest the man or test him for drug or alcohol use. They
> conducted a less-than-energetic search for forensic evidence. They hardly
> bothered to look for witnesses.
>
> Only a national outcry forced authorities to investigate the killing
> seriously. Even after six weeks, evidence was found to justify arresting
> Zimmerman, charging him with second-degree murder and putting him on trial.
> But the chance of dispassionately and definitively establishing what
> happened that night was probably lost. The only complete narrative of what
> transpired was Zimmerman's.
>
> Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed
> guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that
> he profiled Martin -- young, black, hooded sweatshirt -- as a criminal. They
> heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the
> stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman
> fatally shot Martin in the chest.
>
> The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft
> drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his
> father's girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.
>
> To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly
> initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt
> of manslaughter. The six women on the jury disagreed.
>
> Those jurors also knew that Martin, at the time of his death, was just three
> weeks past his 17th birthday. But black boys in this country are not allowed
> to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace.
>
> I don't know if the jury, which included no African-Americans, consciously
> or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking -- there's really
> no other word. But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors
> initially did.
>
> The assumption underlying their ho-hum approach to the case was that
> Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin -- young, male, black --
> did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a
> hand-to-hand struggle but Martin -- young, male, black -- would not.
>
> If anyone wonders why African-Americans feel so passionately about this
> case, it's because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It's
> because we know their adolescent bravura is just that -- an imitation of
> manhood, not the real thing.
>
> We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy
> night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be
> between a child's fear and a child's immature idea of manly behavior. We
> know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or
> fight.
>
> And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and
> bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man
> who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if
> the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well
> have threatened the man's pride, but likely not his life. How many
> murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?
>
> The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys,
> are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We
> need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white
> men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it
> -- and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I
> call this racism. What do you call it?
>
> Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up
> against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.
>
> Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson at washpost.com.
>
>
>
>
>
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:59:13 -0700
> From: Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>
> To: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "vision2020 at moscow.com" <vision2020 at moscow.com>, Keely Emerine-Mix
> <siyocreo at live.com>
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Trayvon Martin rally?
> Message-ID: <9933733E-25DB-494D-ABE1-1EBFB987909F at moscow.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Trayvon Martin was portrayed, by the defense, to be a very healthy, very strong young man. In Zimmerman's own words, during a police interview, he stated that his head was "slammed" to the concrete sidewalk several times. Yet, he was not taken to the hospital EVER for evaluation.
>
> Just before Zimmerman decided to follow and confront Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman stated to the 911 operator, ??Fucking punks. Those assholes, they always get away."
>
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/24/george-zimmerman-trial-day-one-f-king-punks.html
>
> Question: What was it about Trayvon Martin (armed with nothing more than a fruit drink and Skittles) that made Zimmerman think of Martin as a "fucking punk" and "asshole", in spite of the fact that Martin lives in the very neighborhood in which he was shot and killed?
>
> Your response, Mr. Rumelhart?
>
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
> http://www.MoscowCares.com
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "There's room at the top they are telling you still
> But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
> If you want to be like the folks on the hill."
>
> - John Lennon
>
>
>
> On Jul 15, 2013, at 11:44 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Keely,
> >
> > Did you look at the evidence? I don't see how the jury could have done any differently. Zimmerman was using the "self-defense" defense, and there was enough evidence of that to provide reasonable doubt (his injuries, the witness who saw the guy in the white sweater beating on the guy in the red sweater, the inability to determine who was shouting for help). According to Zimmerman, Martin saw his weapon and they fought for it and Zimmerman ended up shooting him in the chest. Since Martin isn't around to give his side of events (conveniently, I know) and since there is no evidence to disprove this, they pretty much had to acquit. In my opinion, of course. To prove second degree murder, they would have to disprove the self-defense defense and show that he was unhinged enough to take this opportunity to go kill Martin. I haven't seen any evidence of that, either.
> >
> > The media has worked hard to make this about race, but there was no indication I saw that Zimmerman was racially motivated. If anything, Martin was the one framing everything by race. NBC had to resort to editing the 9-1-1 tape to make it look like it was racially motivated, but the real 9-1-1 tape doesn't appear to show this (at least what I've heard of it).
> >
> > If you want to get out there and protest something, I recommend protesting what NBC did when editing the 9-1-1 tape in an attempt to ignite racial tensions. Or protest what the NSA has been doing. Or protest the drone strikes or the secret courts or the secret reasoning for gathering information on everyone that can't be revealed. Or protest how the US is going after Snowden so hard instead of cleaning house.
> >
> > Don't be distracted by this media circus.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> > From: Keely Emerine-Mix <siyocreo at live.com>
> > To: "vision2020 at moscow.com" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> > Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 11:18 AM
> > Subject: [Vision2020] Trayvon Martin rally?
> >
> > Visionaires,
> >
> > I've been out of town for two weeks so I don't know if there's a rally or anything scheduled on the Palouse in support of the Trayvon Martin family and to express outrage at the verdict. If not, I'd suggest 6 p.m. Friday at Friendship Square. Please either inform me of something previously planned, or pass this around. I'd be willing to speak and I know others of you would, too.
> >
> > This saddens and angers me beyond measure. We have to speak out.
> >
> > Love,
> > Keely
> >
> >
> >
> > www.keely-prevailingwinds.com
> >
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