Trayvon Martin’s Family, Rest Now—We'll Take It from Here

NAACP's petition is drawing 100,000s of signatures just hours after the acquittal of the killer of Trayvon Martin.

Sign the petition now, though across the nation people are crashing the site as righteous outrage grows.

"The most damning element here is not that George Zimmerman was found not guilty: it’s the bitter knowledge that Trayvon Martin was found guilty," writes Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker.

Yep.

Take care Martin family, no one is going to let George Zimmerman define America over your Trayvon's life.

Proud to Be an American Tonight

Never have I been so proud to see the people demand that the rule of law be followed and that it be just.

People power forced the Florida judicial system to work, people power and nothing less.

The warrant for justice in the murder of Trayvon Martin was drawn and sustained by millions of the American people led by a very small group who said: Oh, hell no, not this time.

Said Robert F. Kennedy, a man who grew as a man out of tragedy, then fighting for justice [what fools today call political correctness]:

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.

Bo Morrison Was Murdered, Empowered by NRA-Corporate-backed Front Group

Sign From the 2011 Wisconsin Protests

Adam Kind is the killer of Bo Morrision of Slinger, Wisconsin.

Kind and other killers like George Zimmerman are legally empowered by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Castle Doctrine Act model legislation that has been enacted across the nation.

In Florida, the Stand Your Ground law uses the same language as the Castle Doctrine Act, and both are pushed by ALEC, as reported in the Center for Media and Democracy.

ALEC is a front group run by several corperations, the Koch brothers and the NRA.

Sure, ALEC alum Scott Walker signed the Wisconsin ALEC Castle Doctrine bill into law, but he did so with a lot of Democratic support.

As reported by SourceWatch:

ALEC’s agenda extends into almost all areas of law. Its bills undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change; support school privatization; undercut health care reform; defund unions and limit their political influence; restrain legislatures’ abilities to raise revenue through taxes; mandate strict election laws that disenfranchise voters; increase incarceration to benefit the private prison industry, among many other issues. 

ALEC legislation is running wild in the states. Let's hope Democrats challenge this threat to democracy and life before someone else gets killed.

As Paul Krugman writes:

[L]anguage virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy. ...

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law. ...

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

New Black Panthers vow to hunt for Trayvon Martin's killer

Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign kickoff speech
at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi

We need a presidential address to the nation on race and the license to kill now.

The rightwing and Republicans will groan, but on matters of race, sexism, sexuality (gays are possessed by demons, Pat Robertson) and equality generally they simply cannot be taken seriously anymore.

Commentary around the world instructs on the urgency of the moment.

RT (Russia Today) - A new development in the Trayvon Martin case could cause further pandemonium. This after The New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is calling for a militia of 5,000 black volunteers to help capture Trayvon’s murderer, George Zimmerman.

CNN - From coast to coast, protesters demand justice in Trayvon Martin case

Politiscoop - In Wisconsin, in the wake of the Bo Morrison-Castle Doctrine murder, victim Morrison's relatives are calling for peace, though the DA and police are covering up.

Midiaite -  Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sinbad, say good people need to speak out.

Eugene Robinson - "The 'Stand Your Ground' laws in Florida and other states should all be repealed. At best, they are redundant. At worst, as in the Trayvon Martin killing, they are nothing but a license to kill."

President Barack Obama - "It is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. … But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son he’d look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

Newt Gingrich - President’s remarks are "disgraceful" ... Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn’t? because it didn't look liked him?"

Forbes Josh Barro - "If conservatives keep letting Newt get away with these sorts of comments, why should they be taken seriously on issues relating to race?"

Adam Kind and George Zimmerman are killers.

Young black men being killed is fairly common.

It's past time for us to say, 'not in our name,' and repeal all Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws, modeled by the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) "the corporate-funded group that aligns special-interest organizations and corporate donors with pliable legislators," as John Nichols points out, using the research on ALEC conducted bythe Center for Media and Democracy.  See the July 2011 Special Report on ALEC's Funding and Spending by the Center for Media and Democracy for continuing updates.

The stakes are high.

Let's hope President Obama leads our country away from a path onto which we are quickly veering, towards a place where we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last!

If we do not; Bo Morrison and Trayvon Martin are just the beginning.

The Lynching of Trayvon Martin

When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe

Update: Over 1,327,162 more signatures for justice.

Over nine hundred thousand people have signed a petition calling for the arrest of George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin for being black.

But as imbecilic as Zimmerman is, let's call this murder what it is: A lynching.

Zimmerman felt entitled to hunt down, assault and then shoot to death Trayvon Martin while speaking to a 911 operator for one reason: Zimmerman is empowered to do so by the Florida statute and the political culture in which we live, one where a major political party constantly strokes racist sentiments among the population to get elected.

Culture does matter. So does political rhetoric.

We understand why President Obama cannot comment now, as press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday, "I note that the Justice Department has said that it’s looking into the matter, and I would refer you to the Justice Department. Obviously, our thoughts and prayers, as I said yesterday, are with Trayvon Martin’s family. But beyond that, not least because there is an investigation going on, I don't have anything else I can add."

But condemnation from Presidents Clinton and Carter, and the Bush family is called for. And that especially includes former Flordia Gov. Jeb Bush. Even Florida legislators who sponsored the Stand Your Ground law are speaking out. So where are the Republican candidates running for president? Not word one.

The family and folks such as Color for Change and the Congressional Black Caucus are driving this investigation for now.

If we cannot communicate a moral imperative for political leaders to speak up, consider the public safety imperative. A deadly riot broke out in 1991 after racist Los Angeles cops who beat Rodney King were acquitted.

Young Trayvon Martin was hunted down and lynched with the implicit approval of the Sanford, Florida police department, and a racist political culture.

So the next time the Republican Party plays their race card, like it is right now, consider the words of Ralph McGill in the Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 13, 1958, after the dynamiting of a Jewish Temple in Atlanta.

Let us face the facts. This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown. It is the harvest of those so-called Christian ministers who have chosen to preach hate instead of compassion. Let them now find pious words and raise their hands in deploring the bombing of a synagogue. You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe.