I Can't Believe it's Not Murder!

[Osterbaum]

Two wrongs don't make a right, were you ever taught that? Violence breeds violence, etc etc, but seriously for a moment, the answer isn't chaos. In a riot, people who aren't involved get hurt and property gets damaged. Racial hate does not need to be answered by chaos. If they were planning a protest, I wouldn't give two shits, but stating intent to riot over a hate crime is insanity.

Non-violence for the sake of nonviolence or some sort of perceived liberal or middle-class ideal is ineffective. What get's results is a diversity of tactics and strict non-violence is often a way for certain people to monopolize the power in a movement and render the movement essentially ineffectual.

How Nonviolence Protects the State is an anarchist text, but is an informative and interesting piece regardless of if you subscribe to anarchist ideas or not.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Want to know precisely how unbiased 1/6 of the jury was?

Here you go!

EDIT: Also, turns out Stand Your Ground laws lead to more people getting killed!

Who would have thought?

[Azisien]

I've been too busy to do much research on the new revelations of this case, but this is how I've interpreted things:

Zimmerman was acquitted because the prosecution had a terrible case, that is, they didn't really have much evidence to go on, since their main witness was Martin. Because of this, the trial basically came down to Zimmerman's word, in which he claimed Martin attacked him and he defended himself.

Based on that, I'm not so sure I can even blame the jurors, the judge, or the court for what happened. To find Zimmerman guilty would have been to do the opposite of the laws governing this trial, given what was presented. Based on THAT, the primary thing that is broken are the laws themselves. In conclusion, focus your anger mainly on the laws, and the broken system as a whole, not the small pawns more or less doing their job in this trial.

But yeah I'm sure there's details I'm missing and such.

[Nique]

Originally Posted by Azisien

I've been too busy to do much research on the new revelations of this case, but this is how I've interpreted things:

Zimmerman was acquitted because the prosecution had a terrible case, that is, they didn't really have much evidence to go on, since their main witness was Martin. Because of this, the trial basically came down to Zimmerman's word, in which he claimed Martin attacked him and he defended himself.

Based on that, I'm not so sure I can even blame the jurors, the judge, or the court for what happened. To find Zimmerman guilty would have been to do the opposite of the laws governing this trial, given what was presented. Based on THAT, the primary thing that is broken are the laws themselves. In conclusion, focus your anger mainly on the laws, and the broken system as a whole, not the small pawns more or less doing their job in this trial.

But yeah I'm sure there's details I'm missing and such.

This is somewhat reasonable. However, let's remember that 1/2 of the jury was for Murder 2 or Manslaughter at some point in the deliberations.

This case defies all common sense, but is probably doing so in large part because 'stand your ground' defies all common sense and becomes a playground for ambiguity, subjective and outright bigoted application.

What I also hate is everyone complaining that anyone who has a problem with this verdict is 'pretending to be a legal expert' which is not the case - it takes an average amount of critical thinking skills to see that the verdict is wrong IN SPITE of the law, not because of it. In that way, Az is totally right; 'The Law' is wrong here because it allows something like this to happen.

[Osterbaum]

It's a racist system letting a racist go free. A state run by a racist governor with a racist justice system and a racist police force. Even if every single person in there isn't a racist, that doesn't make the system as a whole any less racist.

This blogpost makes a good point about the whole 'stand your ground' thing:

Evidence was shown at the trial of injuries to Zimmerman that may or may not have been the result of a fight between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. A law used on behalf of George Zimmerman was Florida’s racist 2005 “stand your ground law”, which gives the right to kill instead of retreating even when retreat is a possible alternative. Even if Zimmerman’s injuries weren’t created after the fact, the question arises, at what point of pursuit by a scary “creepy-ass cracker” by car and on foot did Trayvon Martin have the right to stand his ground? Obviously, the law doesn’t apply to Black people being stalked for no reason by dangerous cop wannabes in Florida.

[Azisien]

More than that, the powers that be (the media, and through them, the government, and through them, the corporations/lobbyists, and through them, the gold/DNA-seeking transdimensional reptiles) are also 100% fluffing up this case in the media to cause a moral panic (standard populace-controlling doctrine, not even creative or new) and get our attention away from the fact that the United States and probably every other powerful country in the world is completely ignoring the privacy of all of its citizens and spying on every single electronic thing you do.

Not to detract the current thread, or downplay this case, but that's what's happening.

And it's working.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Osterbaum

Non-violence for the sake of nonviolence or some sort of perceived liberal or middle-class ideal is ineffective. What get's results is a diversity of tactics and strict non-violence is often a way for certain people to monopolize the power in a movement and render the movement essentially ineffectual.

Yea I mean just look at Martin Luther King or Gandhi and how their non-violent protests failed to accomplish anything.

Contrast that to China and North Korea and how their underclass revolution resulted in fair treatment for everyone

[BitVyper]

Attributing the entire civil rights movement to MLK is an insult to everyone else involved in the civil rights movement. Furthermore, even the nonviolent movement just kept its protests nonviolent. They had to be willing to arm and violently defend themselves in places like Mississippi because groups like the KKK were attacking them. This is saying nothing of the not-so-nonviolent side of the movement.

Everyone oversimplifies things to "and then MLK came along and did some nonviolent things and everyone had civil rights forever." It was not that tidy at all. Quoted from http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us...nd-nonviolence :

"Well, our strategy was we always did carry our weapons out there. ...And so, when they came over that Wednesday night and started to shooting, and when they got down there about half a mile, our people opened fire on them. And so, they turned around, and come back that a-way. And when they come back that a-way, the people on that side started shooting over they heads. And [when they] got in town, they said, "We not going to go back out there no more." And said “Them niggers got all kinds of machine guns out there.”...and that word got out, and so from then on we never had no more problems when we'd go out there [with] nobody coming by shooting no more. So that broke that up."

How was nonviolence going to help them?

The civil rights movement isn't your one-stop counter argument to violent revolt. There was plenty of armed conflict to go around. MLK gets focused on in an effort to pretend none of that happened. If people hadn't been willing to violently defend themselves, the people trying to organize nonviolent protests would have been getting shot a lot more.

Now I go back to the shadows. Ever watchful, ever ready to act.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Yea I mean just look at Martin Luther King or Gandhi and how their non-violent protests failed to accomplish anything.

Contrast that to China and North Korea and how their underclass revolution resulted in fair treatment for everyone

Aero holy shit this is speaking to such a deep level of ignorance of those things.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by K-Resh

Aero holy shit this is speaking to such a deep level of ignorance of those things.

so is saying violence is the inherent solution. I would never claim that total pacifism is the only solution to an issue but there are plenty of issues with violent approaches. The biggest being the large risk of replacing one form of oppression with another.

Real change is achieved by shifting cultural views not by laws or governments. The changing of laws is merely a sign of a culture changing. A recent example, anti gay marriage laws. This was not some royal decree. This was an amendment given a vote and the majority of voters supported it. This is an example of a homophobic culture influencing legislation to support their prejudice.

Certainly laws have an impact. They are not the deciding factor. You can destroy this system and replace it with whatever you want. Its not gonna stop discrimination.

Education, art, media, change the culture, what the common man thinks, and you will see change.