Within minutes upon hearing the verdict in the George Zimmerman case, I was stunned into a soul-deep retreat. It’s not that I didn’t know it would happen. This is America, after all. You knew the sooner the verdict came in that Zimmerman would be acquitted. The jury in the Zimmerman trial did not disappoint.
All it took for the defense team to secure a not guilty verdict was to align enough reasonable doubt amongst the jurors that four minutes — the amount of time needed for Martin to reach his father’s house — was: “how long Trayvon Martin had to run.
“Did they [prosecutors] show you, tell you, explain to you, give you any insight whatsoever on what Trayvon Martin was doing four minutes before that fight started at the T intersection?” he asked. “Do you have a doubt as to what Trayvon Martin was doing and what he must have been thinking for four minutes?”
By those very questions, the defense invited the jurors to scratch the race card, seeding four minutes of doubt as to what Trayvon Martin was up to. The same card makes young black men suspect before investigating, incarcerated or shot before having chance to protest their innocence.
Any number of things could have happened between the two in those long 240 seconds during the chase. But “reasonable doubt” found the one with the weapon was the one who was in danger, racially profiling and killing the black kid with the Skittles, cell phone and can of ice tea who had no chance to tell his story in court. As we feared, at the end of the trial jurors found Trayvon Martin guilty, charged him with vague suspicious criminal intent and approved his execution ex-post facto for being a young black male in America. All it took was four minutes.
With little exception, there is no place in the American legal system where being African American isn’t already a strike against you. That bias is not only codified into law, its accreditation continues in the redlining of blacks in the media, society and economics as violence-prone and demonized mostly for being poor and an undue burden on society.
Quality human services — starting with the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent Great Society — were meant to bridge the divide caused by the history of America’s racially based economic and social inequality. Where are these services now? They have eroded over the decades, that erosion accelerating with a Republican majority Congress during the Gingrich era in the 1990s.
That erosion furthered the demonization, social and legal isolation of blacks to the point where news of another violent and unjust death of a young black man is greeted with a forlorn sigh of acceptance, a shaking of the head that this “is just how it is.”
I am not African American. I will never ever be fully articulate about the inequity of the legal system in the United States, let alone the 400 years of human trafficking that formed the basis of the U.S. economy at the country’s inception, and now even into today. I will never know the profound injustice of being criminalized for being black. Or having to live on a daily basis under the suspicion of doing something wrong simply by being my color.
Yet the momentary blip of that tiny New York Times ping “George Zimmerman Found Not Guilty” at the top of my screen sank my heart at the sight of it. It’s not about where we’ve been. It’s about where we are now and where we’re going. bell hooks’ words on the Zimmerman trial nails the stake in the heart:
White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action.
Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat.”
This is what the worship of death looks like.
Stand Your Ground, an ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) law developed by a right-wing think tank and supported by big money was voted in by a majority of red states, mostly southern, that included Florida. ALEC laws like “Stand Your Ground” are rooted in white privilege and fear of the dark “other” who is — by their existence alone — suspect for taking your hard-earned “stuff.” The rights of a victimized member of the privileged class and their guardians trump those of a murdered young man.
Trayvon Martin and the rest of us live in a world where, as bell hooks so elegantly addressed, death worship is at the very core. Little by little, step by step, the rights of individuals are sacrificed on the altar of expediency to continue the broken legal and social systems that feed us into an economic system — one that eats its young.
Where we’re going is anyone’s guess, but I think that since human exploitation was such a successful model for creating an agricultural powerhouse in the 18th-century South, the use of that same economic model has never really been let go of in the present day. It’s been modified for 21st-century use. Not just here, but everywhere.
As for all of us “others” — African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women, gays and the poor all benefited from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s — if we continue to be silent, all of us “others” will fall with its decline, divided from each other, driven by suspicion against each other in our current economic state of have and have-not. Hoping that in our dog-eat-dog world of fighting for a decreasing share of the pie, whoever survives this increasingly smaller life raft we call ‘living in the USA’ will be us. This is the divide that conquers us all.
You’ll have to forgive my unrelenting approach to today’s thread. Many of you who have heard this same rap before might possibly have the same opinion you’ve had when I wrote about it in the past. But I am growing weary of the belief in the same lies, repeated over and over, that keep us from recognizing just how numb we are becoming. Another life has been taken.
If there is any hope to be drawn from the acquittal of George Zimmerman, it’s that we are recognizing in our moment of stunned, painful silence over the trial’s outcome that the deeper wrong of intolerance that killed Trayvon Martin diminishes our collective soul and must be righted. The silence must be broken, and if not now, when?
Please speak.
Four Minutes
One of my first lessons in astrology
“four minutes equals one arc minute of Ascension”
Thank you, fe, for the reminder.
Keeping my thoughts with the Fulton/Martin family.
“What I’m really saying here is that it’s no longer enough to divide into Us and Them. We need a new way of thinking about this”. Yes, you’re so right, Ketchup. Thank you for your brave, wise words.
Ketchup,
You summed it up beautifully, and it is very much in accord with what I wrote, from a different angle. We are part of this bigger game, and the more we work together to change the rules so we can coexist in peace, the better.
Fe: Thank you for finding the heart of the matter, and my own. Thank you for somehow holding it together enough to write this thoroughly just and eloquently worded piece. You inspire me to be stronger and do better.
I don’t think white supremacy is BS. I DO think it’s BS to write off George Zimmerman as an example of white supremacy. The truth is more complex than that. It’s irritatingly complex, and I don’t have answers.
There are very real problems in black communities that lead to an inordinate amount of crime, at least in my city. I agree those problems are a direct result of white supremacy. But I see that as a parallel issue to the Zimmerman case.
As a people we have forgotten we are all the same. It’s not just the progressive-minded among us who are broken-hearted. It’s ALL of us. All of us are in pain. Including those labeled ignorant, oppressive, behind the times, vigilantes, sheeple, etc.
We all have our realities. Our society is in reality gridlock right now. If we want to make any progress, we’re going to have to get out of the car and walk. The point I’m trying to make us that lumping George Zimmerman in with all the other very real examples of white supremacy is to pass up an opportunity to look more closely at how we might move forward as a culture.
My perspective is perhaps different because I have been in George Zimmerman’s shoes. As it happens, I’ve also experienced being judged unfavorably by the color of my skin. It was the stinging experience that helped me understand how real and shitty white supremacy is. I don’t think I underestimate the damage it has caused.
What I’m really saying here is that it’s no longer enough to divide into Us and Them. We need a new way of thinking about this.
Fe: Thank you. Food, some barefoot walking outside… and now my belly is having a rest.
Nilou:
Thanks for your observations from across the pond. Looking at my response to ketchup, I gave a cursory outline of just the systemic problems leading to Trayvon’s death. But you hit the nail on the head and echoed what Eric has been saying about the Zimmerman acquittal in that it does validate vigilante justice, in other words, “lynching”.
The Federal Department of Justice is being pressed to pursue a hate crime charge against Zimmerman. I am not sure about its survival in the courts, but if charged and forced to court, Zimmerman will finally have to testify. Given Eric’s previous work on Zimmerman’s chart, it will be an interesting show indeed.
Ketchup:
The blame game is the problem, and was designed to be so. To bash white supremacy — a movement, not simple individuals, is not to bash white people, but the overarching system used to increase the divide between whites and people of color.
It is evident as to who has the lion’s share of power, particularly in the justice system where sentencing laws for the same crime are different for African Americans than for whites. The prison industrial complex is one example of the inhumane warehousing of people, mostly people of color, who are paid a small wage to produce products that you and I consume with none of the decreasing labor law protections other workers have “outside”.
Schools in poor inner urban areas are short shrifted, while others have the opportunity of choice for charter or private schools. Not to say those poorer schools are not getting attention, but the damage over generations has already been done.
Your concerns as to your safety are noted and valid, but it takes a whole lot of system and a convenient amnesia of history to build the injustice that creates the crime you have experienced in your neighborhood. What i wrote above is not to justify those crimes, but to shed light on the larger picture.
What Trayvon Martin’s death should do is cause us to look further and deeper into the history of this country, the inelegantly hateful and ham-handed way we are directed to perceive race and culture in this society, and the reasons why we are directed, cajoled and manipulated to do so.
Ketchup2- your opinion about white supremacy as BS is one thing that will probably not be changed here on this astrology site. i’m sorry that your home was broken into and that your child was frightened. it makes one feel powerless.
My opinion is one that white supremacy will be the deciding factor on how suspects are handled by the police, if they are shot first or given their miranda rights, or if they receive a fair sentence.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122
and here is something that is happening around some of our neighborhoods in this time of economic hardship and rising crime
http://ellabakercenter.org/blog/2013/05/fortifying-defenses-oakland’s-wealthy-see-class-and-race-not-humanity
i hold out hope that we can work things out and work together for a better future for all.
peace and blessings
Thank you for your post, Fe
I do not feel this as a (purely) local issue. I’m in London, UK. It wasn’t because I thought Tryvon Martin was a nice boy that I shed tears for him. It’s because I know what black men (young and old) go through in the streets of London. I remembered Steven Lawrence and his family. I thought of all the places in the world where I know children and young people are not safe to walk out of their front door, to go to school, to visit friends, to go out and play, to just live.
I know very little about Trayvon Martin. I do know he was run down and shot (I listened to the tape posted on PW at the time) four minutes from his home and the US justice system is saying that that is okay. The same nation that sets the framework of law for the ‘free-world’. It’s not okay. Part of me really wants to be reasonable and measured in my response, and to be understanding of the complexity of the issues and compassionate for everyone concerned: but I’m way too angry. My belly is churning and my emotional body is in convulsions.
I want someone to explain to me how this isn’t a state-sanctioned lynching. I don’t know if Zimmerman is vigilante enough to shoot anyone he doesn’t want in his neighbourhood: but it wasn’t ‘anyone’ he shot, it was a seventeen-year old African-American human being named Trayvon Martin. The first question that comes to my mind is not as I would like it to be ‘what can we learn so that this never happens again?’, or ‘what will it take for this to stop’ – it’s ‘who’s going to be next?’, and frustration is much too small a word to describe the feeling. Quite a storm.
Hey ketchup:
What do you think is off kilter in our society?
“White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action.”
I call BS on this. I live in a neighborhood where rashes of burglaries happen like clockwork (when school lets out, etc.) I have been burglarized. Whenever the culprit behind a neighborhood burglary is arrested, the neighborhood listserv is notified. The vast majority of the burglars fit a particular profile. Noticing this does not make me a bad person. It does, however, suggest that something is off kilter in our society. I am a good person, yet I have felt outrage that my home was violated. I have felt impotent rage at seeing perp face after perp face pop up on my email.
The facile answer is to blame white supremacy. I believe the truth is far more nuanced than that. I don’t know what that truth is. But this self-righteous blame game isn’t it.
This case is tragic all the way around. I feel sad for Trayvon Martin. I feel sad for George Zimmerman. I feel sad for the person who burglarized my home. I feel sad for my daughter, who still worries about it two years later. It’s all just fucking sad.
Demonizing either side helps nothing. We need truth and humble reflection, not more of the same broad-scale failure — refusal — to see one another as the complicated humans we are.
But my heart leapt with joy on seeing this just now,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/23311168
(‘if not now, when?’)
Yes, thank you for ths piece, dear Fe, that comes from a breaking heart, which I share, and is also wise and informative. After the verdict, I thought of all the Afro-Americans on death row, so many of them innocent. How such a barbarity is accepted in a so-called civilized world beats me, but that’s because scratch the surface and one finds that this world is not so civilized after all.
And thank you, Be!!
You know, another story came to mind as I was talking to my sister about this yesterday – that of Billy Budd. He was a beautiful, sweet, innocent soul, a sailor (19th century? don’t temember very well) – who is the oblect of loathing and torment by his direct superior, and ends up killing him because he can no longer take the torment – and is hung for this murder at the end of the story. A sweet, charming, inocent young man, the unprotected victim of an older man’s self-loathing and despair. The thing that I find so painful, is the innocence and sweetness of Trayvon Martin – and that he was totally unprotected, in life and now in death. And yes, you’re right Fe, this has to change.
Be:
As always, you provide the framework for where we can go in the midst of this confusion. Thank you so much for being a guiding star for this canary.
Dear Fe, as you have done in the past, today – once again, you are our canary-in-the-coal-mine. The fumes that are making you “weary” can be overcome with just a little air. Tonight we have just a bit of air (Moon still in Libra!) that will bring you round, and if you can survive this, then so can we.
Recently a friend made me aware of the asteroid Alice. For this demonstration Alice will play the role of Alice in Wonderland, so up out of the coal mine with you and down into the rabbit hole we go. The Universe has been telling us a story that is really a story about our ourselves; human beings. It’s a lot like Alice’s story but in the interest of privacy, real names will not be used. Playing the parts in Our Story will be various symbols from astrology and ancient myths. In Alice’s story she would learn about how hard it is to leave childhood and become a grownup. The Universe has something similar in mind for we human beings.
Curiosity made me look for today’s Alice; where she was and what she was up to. Well, transiting Alice is at 6+ Capricorn now and very near transiting Pluto. She is sextile Persephone who was Pluto’s wife and she is at 6+ Scorpio; very near transiting Saturn. For me, finding a sextile always leads to a search for a 3rd planet that would form a yod aspect, which in this case would have to be at 6+ Gemini. Nobody there today, but on November 28, 2012, there was a lunar eclipse at 6+ Gemini. Was Alice leading me back to the future? Well, you decide.
The lunar eclipse at 6+ Gemini last November featured a quincunx to Saturn at 6+ Scorpio (where Persephone is today) and this eclipse Saturn was conjunct Venus at 8+ Scorpio. The two of them were sextile Pluto and Mars (both at 8+ Capricorn), which, ironically formed – you guessed it – a yod with the eclipsed Moon in Gemini. Mars conjunct Pluto, hmmm. . . .
Eclipses take a while to reveal their message, it’s true, and, at 6+ Gemini, this eclipse was to become even more potent when, 2 months later, on January 30th, trans. Jupiter (playing the role of Wisdom) stationed direct, also at 6+ Gemini. That day the Sun (playing the role of Consciousness) squared Saturn (playing the role of Maturity). I can’t tell you what happened that day (needs more research) or where Alice was transiting, but I know this much. Transiting Mars (playing the role of the Aggressor most likely) was conjunct the U.S. Moon (the Mother) both at 27+ Aquarius.
We know Alice met a lot of strange characters in her story. Sometimes she was “big” and sometimes very “small”. Her story depended on symbols from a deck of cards to move forward or make sense. Our Story relies on symbols to help us move forward or make sense of the crazy people and crazy things that keep happening and that make us weary, confused, angry, sad, fearful and yes, numb. In the end, Alice was just dreaming and I’m pretty sure that’s the state we are in also. Astrology tells us that we have reached the land of little Air but lots and lots of Water. For now, instead of looking for logic (air) and reason (more air), we must find the answers we are searching for through our feelings (water) and dreams (more water) in order to move forward. We must trust them just like we trust logic and reason, until we can know in our hearts whether we want to stay children or are ready to grow up.
Here’s something to get us started. Today Alice is at 6+ Capricorn. That Sabian Symbol is A VEILED PROPHET SPEAKS, SEIZED BY THE POWER OF A GOD – The ability to act as a mouthpiece for the revelation of a transcendent will and truth determining future action.
Dane Rudhyar says this about the above symbol “At the threshold of tomorrow man is allowed to have a vision or revelation of the essential elements of the as-yet-unknown next step in evolution.” Now take another deep breath and let’s get ready to start swimming.
be
A word:
Geez, I heard and read about the attack, but never saw it There’s a survival psychosis that feels like its infiltrated the waters. This is stuff that should alarm us, but is trivialized in the news, when we should be looking to heal, as the band had asked.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/15/2300421/singer-attacked-trayvon-martin-dedication/
I’m grateful for your “unrelenting approach”, Fe. We can use more of that and less of an economic system that eats its young.
Today I agree, “where we’re going is anyone’s guess”. Perhaps this is ground zero.