Progressive groups are justifiably outraged at the Not Guilty verdict in the Trayvon Martin Murder trial. Petitions are being sent by the NAACP, Move on and other groups calling for the Obama administration to invoke provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which enabled the federal government to try individuals for crimes against minorities and women, when local communities would refuse to prosecute or local juries would refuse to convict based on long established patterns of institutional prejudice.
The bar for the federal government in making such a case is high, but such trials have succeeded on a significant number of occasions before and can in this case through a mass campaign in which all of these organizations, unite and develop such a campaign, using petitions, demonstrations, the support of leading figures in Congress, and in the arts, sciences, and professions to develop the campaign.
Let‘s look at some of the most important aspects of the case.
First let’s look at the protagonists. Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teenager walking in the wrong place at the wrong time. A teenager with a history of marijuana use (he had been suspended from school when a marijuana bag was found in his locker) but no history of violent crime and a reputation for being mild mannered---a teenager wearing a “hoodie” popular with kids, teenagers and even some adults, worn by large numbers of people.
Having grown up in the South Bronx in the 1950s, in a neighborhood much tougher than the one Trayvon Martin lived in, I learned to distinguish between the violent, dangerous gang youth and the rest of the kids, who avoided them as best they could.
Sometimes some of those kids, the good kids, Black, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Italian, trying to get by , would get a tough guy haircut, even a tough guy leather jacket, much more menacing then any “hoodie.”
All they had to worry about was running in to real gang members(who didn’t have real guns) or possibly being stopped by the police if they walked into the wrong neighborhood. Even in a time, a place, and a society where ideological and institutional racism was still “normal,” any person with a real hand gun who followed them and then shot and killed them would have been arrested, indicted, tried and convicted of murder, manslaughter, depraved indifference homicide, or some other felony depending on the circumstances of the shooting.
Trayvon was leaving his father’s home in an Orlando gated community(his parents are divorced) after visiting his father and his father’s fiancé, on his way home to his mother, a longtime local public employee, when Zimmerman spotted him and began to follow him
Now let’s look at George .Zimmerman. Zimmerman is of German(-American(based on the name) and Peruvian-American extraction, regarded by his appearance as “white” even though his Peruvian- American mother and Peruvian American police official uncle, both of whom testified at the trial, are dark-skinned people, as are many Peruvians, descendants of the advanced Inca civilization which Spanish colonialists devastated in the 16th century.
His father, according to a Washington Post story, is a retired military officer who raised his children in a strict manner in Manassas, Virginia, scene of the famous Confederate victory at the Battle of Bull Run at the beginning of the Civil War.
In high school, Zimmerman according to press reports had ambitions which conservatives like to call the “American dream.” He joined a Future Business Leaders of American group and in his high school year book wrote, “ I am going to Florida to work with my Godfather who just bought a million dollar business.”
But all of that was a pipe dream. The son of a military officer and the nephew of a police official, Zimmerman then struggled unsuccessfully for years to become a police officer in Seminole County(a center of the anti-bellum “Indian wars” that followed Andrew Jackson' Indian Removal policy ).
By the standards of his family and community, from my readings, Zimmerman was a “loser” a frustrated failure with a penchant for violence.
For example he joined his neighborhood watch group, even though the press reports it wasn’t officially registered with the police. Between 2004 and 2012 according to the Washington Post, he contacted the police 46 times with reports of suspicious characters and in 2005 was “twice accused of either criminal misconduct or violence.” Once he was charged with resisting arrest in an altercation with a policeman who was arresting a friend for under-age drinking. The second time he was charged with assaulting his former fiancée who then got an order of protection against him(he countercharged, which is common in domestic violence cases, and got an order of protection against her)
In spite of that record, in Florida, he was able to get a concealed weapons permit, and was carrying a holstered semi-automatic handgun(to sustain, I would suggest ,his fantasy) with which Trayvon Martin was killed
It would take both a psychiatrist and social psychologist to analyze the influence of color racism in both Virginia and Northern Florida on Zimmerman, whose Peruvian mother and relatives would not be considered “white.”
Also, the ethnic divisions which have long characterized U.S. society, with various groups of immigrants and even different people of color played against each other, doesn’t preclude the influence of a racist political culture on Zimmerman, whose family and attorneys sought to deny any hint of racism in any of his previous actions
Of Zimmerman’s more recent calls to the police, the press reports that they had been of “suspicious characters” all of whom were Black, walking in the Neighborhood.
Although Zimmerman had jobs working at insurance companies, he was attending Seminole County College in a two year Associates Degree program in the hope that this would help him eventually become a police officer, He had even said that he might return to Virginia where he might have a better chance to become a police officer.
On the night of the killing. He had called the real police and told them about a suspicious character he had seen in a hoodie. They told him not to follow , but he did. His story is that Martin attacked him, a fight ensued, and Martin was shot as he was trying to seize his gun.
Since Martin is dead, no one can hear his side of the story, but Zimmerman’s really isn’t plausible. Martin called a friend (who testified at the trial) that he told her that he was being stalked.
Martin had no history of violence. In similar situations in my old neighborhood, which I remember, people being followed by someone bigger then themselves would begin to run. My suspicion, not based on any evidence, is that Martin began to run, Zimmerman jumped him, and the fight and shooting ensued.
I have no evidence to support that; but Zimmerman had no evidence to support his interpretation of events, certainly not the pictures used by the defense of his wounds and bruises from the fight, which certainly could have been inflicted by Martin trying to defend himself or by the interaction of the two as the fight progressed. The indisputable facts are these.
Zimmerman was following Martin against the advice of the police. Zimmerman was armed and Martin wasn’t. Zimmerman had a history of violence and Martin didn’t. Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman’s gun, with no forensic evidence to suggest that this was some kind of accident.
The police and prosecutors did not arrest Zimmerman for two months. Had there not been a national uproar, it is doubtful that they would have When the nationally televised trial began, rightwing media and the defense did everything they could to make Martin the villain, seizing upon every scrap of “evidence” they could to portray him as a violent Black criminal and drug user whom Zimmerman legitimately saw as a threat to law and order in the community.
Watching the trial I was disappointed but not surprised by the prosecutions diffidence, to say the least. They never really went after Zimmerman and allowed themselves to become involved endlessly on the narrow question of who was screaming on the 911 call to the police during the fight. Nor did they really challenge the defense witnesses who claimed that Martin was on top of Zimmerman in the fight.
All of that, since there were no witnesses to the beginning of the fight, was largely irrelevant—who was screaming and who was on top of whom, in no way negates the facts that Zimmerman ignored the police demand that he not follow Martin and that Zimmerman was armed and Martin was not.
Much of the trial rested on “Florida “Stand Your Ground” law, which permits armed individuals to shoot unarmed individuals if they believe that they are threatened with bodily harm. These laws have been pushed in recent years by American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC) a powerful rightwing policy planning and lobbying group which has played a leading role in seeking to undermine environmental protections, destroy public sector unions. attack the trade union movement generally, and make local and state criminal law more punitive.
It s members include over 2,000 state legislators, 85 members of Congress and a number of governors. It works in alliance with groups like the National Rifle Association, the National Right to Work Committee, etc, to advance in legislation rightwing policies on a wide variety of issues.
In this case, everything was on the side of what ALEC and its allies represent---state gun laws and “stand your ground” laws that belong in Hollywood movies about the Frontier West; a less than zealous prosecution in an area where the defense had what one would call in American professional sports a home field advantage. And a trial and media which refused to even attempt to separate the forest from the trees in dealing with the issues of the case.
Perhaps the most grotesque statement of all was made by one of Zimmerman’s defense attorneys, Mark O’Mara, who said “if George Zimmerman was Black, he never would have been charged with a crime.”
If an African-American with George Zimmerman’s record had killed a white teenager with a “hoodie” under these circumstances, who doubts t hat that person would not have been convicted of murder. If George Zimmerman had killed a white teenager under the conditions these circumstances, who doubts that we would not have been convicted of manslaughter or some similar charge, If a Black George Zimmerman had killed a Black teenager, it is possible that no charges would have been filed because, it what is also a very old pattern in the history of U.S. racism, the authorities would not have cared unless mass pressure was brought to bear against them. In this case, it took two months to arrest Zimmerman
Divided appeals and petitions will not answer ALEC, the NRA, or the Florida Republicans whose general gun laws and “Stand Your Ground” law served as the background to this case. A federal Civil Rights trial for George Zimmerman is merited and can be achieved through united action. National gun laws which would finally permit the U.S. to join the rest of the developed world in protecting both its citizens and its law enforcement officers are more longterm parts of this struggle, along with the repeal or the judicial nullification of “stand your ground” laws that give people in a few states the right to shoot and kill others that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t have.
