I was going to ignore this due to the fact that I don't like rent-a-cops but frankly this is total BS. People wearing white hoodies to Church?
I started to care about the story when my neighbor with the Obama sticker got all worked up about it and started telling me about race inequalities in New Orleans in 1962 which I think is pretty relevant to the issues at hand. Then He tells me witnesses saw the cop mouth "self defense," to the guy and that hoodie-boy's father identified his screams off the 911 tape. So I looked it up. Took me about five minutes to find a second opinion. The neighborhood watch guy got knocked down and beat up.
I don't think he should have shot hoodie-boy but after I heard that his brush with law enforcement was due to him pushing an ATF officer I got a little more sympathetic.
Then I saw the news today. People are wearing hoodies out of solidarity...
Great, we will all dress like gangsters now? Get gold front teeth? Go around and provoke jumpy neighborhood watch people?
There are lessons to be learned all right...Tragedy equals political gain. Never, ever let black folks forget they are victims. White people are racist by definition.
Lessons not to be learned, trying to look tough is not a virtue, don't mess with a guy with a gun, an over six foot 17 year old is not a 12 year old.
Look at this supposedly sympathetic link, what are we trying to do-create a race war? Geraldo Rivera's son is ashamed of him the only time in Geraldo's life he has made anything close to a sensible statement?
This is total activism, out and out manipulation and no one has the moral courage to say a thing. Except for Newt...
It is a total set up for something which will result in 1. a loss of personal freedoms, 2. Nothing at all beneficial to the cause of stopping racism-cause it wasn't.
Anyway, someone sent me a link to this blog and he says pretty much what I wanted to say. The basic facts are out there but I'm sure it will all go down the memory hole. After all this is of course the South in 1962...
Anyway, my opinion doesn't matter. You will believe what ever fits your worldview. Wonder if the story would have gone national if the guy's last name was not "Zimmerman."
Frankly I don't like either one of the people involved.
Is there no actual racial incidents to get riled up about? Why make up a story when I've read any number of stories about totally innocent black kids getting roughed up by cops or hassled. What about that story about the guy that had restored the car and somebody hit him and the cops hauled him in and he spent the night in jail? I'll have to look up that link again. That was injustice but of course nobody got killed and there was not a gun law involved.
After all the stories we hear about old guys getting locked up for stopping a burglary and there was one about a guy in I think it was Miami who was being attacked by gang members so he shot his AK into the ground so the gunshot sensors would get the cops there faster. He got hauled in.
Frankly, I can't believe cops would pass up an opportunity to haul in a guy for defending himself with a gun unless there is more to the story.
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Blame the Hoodie? Walking while black with a hoodie, punishable by death?? Have we come to this???
ReplyDeleteGIVE ME A BREAK. Hey, the poor kid was running in the rain .....and being stalked .......and ....I’M SORRY...but we don't ALL use Totes umbrellas when going to the corner grocery store for a snack. NOR should we risk losing our very lives while doing so! Mr. Rivera: you should be ashamed of your inane, insensitive comments about Trayvon’s death, and your attempts to create "excuses" for the inexcusable actions of judge-jury-and-executioner George Zimmerman (...AND...those that would imitate him). We are becoming a society that seeks and sees threats under every rock; a frightened society that sees danger with every “other” that is not just like us; a manipulated society with control-freaks running rampant (whether politicians or mayors or police chiefs or individuals). Power-hungry people that are only too eager to take advantage of our fears; that are only too willing to get away with anything and everything that they can, as they deprive us of our our liberty (and sometimes our lives).....all in the name of defending it. What a shell game. But were it only a game. For it includes the worst provisions of the Patriot Act, the police spying on innocent people, “papers-please” and stop&frisk gone wild, the “right” to indefinitely detain Americans without trial, and out-of-control homicidal vigilantes such as we have tragically seen here. It’s a serious, slippery slope... one that ultimately leads to a police state/Orwellian mentality that is more typical of places such as China or Cuba - NOT the America that I know and love. We USED to stand proud and free, and contrasted our open society to such sorry places. Now we imitate them. Our country is better than this. Our values are better than this. WE are better than this. Don’t blame the hoodie......blame what we are becoming, and allowing, and doing as a society. As Shakespeare once said: the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves: For we have come to accept things that should NEVER be accepted by a freedom-loving people. It’s time... it’s way past time, to reverse course. Let bring some good out of this tragedy.... and work to never let it happen again. You DO have the power, my friend. USE IT.
Don't blame the hoodie, don't blame the hoodie, don't blame the hoodie... and then you go on about manipulation? It is not like you are ever going to come back and read this so I don't know what the point is in responding...
DeleteThe "hoodie" issue is supposed to get you all worked up. "He was just a kid in a sweatshirt..."
It is the same thing as a girl walking around dressed like a street walker late at night or me walking into a black neighborhood with a... well, just me walking around in Portland after dark. I don't have to change...
1. Be aware of your surrounding
2. Don't wear anything remotely gang-like
3. Don't escalate the threat
The killing of a person is a serious event. Having said this, the entire incident is media hype. I am not following it myself but everyone is talking about it and most of what I hear is mass hysteria based on ignorance. No one knows anything. This is why we have trials. Let the system work and quit threatening to riot is you don't get your way.
ReplyDeleteThe race card players are making hay on rumors and gossip.
Good points.
Grace and peace.
I was not paying much attention to the story as it has all the markings of election year hype.
DeleteI just really object to the slanted journalism, they are pulling out all the stops in convicting Zimmerman.
It is morally wrong.
And I say that after my first instinct being to blame Zimmerman!
Mostly because I don't like rent-a-cops...
While I agree, in part, with stanchaz, I think his attitude toward Zimmerman shows that he's little better than those he condemns. Perhaps a small dose of Hack Wilson at http://hackwilson.blogspot.com/2012/03/george-zimmerman-is-guilty-of-one-thing.html will give him a more balanced perspective.
ReplyDelete