I was watching a baseball game when suddenly the scores ticker at the bottom of the screen turned red and started scrolling “GEORGE ZIMMERMAN WAS FOUND” and I mouthed the words “not guilty” before it slowly scrolled out the words “NOT GUILTY.”
My first thought was curiosity of when the first rash of race-related protests were going to start. When the game ended, I switched to FOX News and CNN (yeah, I know, they’re not exactly the most reliable news outlets but I don’t really know of any others, nor did I really care that much to inquire), and sure enough the protests were already in full swing, and naturally it wasn’t so much about George Zimmerman being found not guilty, but about how the black man was once again wronged.
I could be wrong, but I don’t remember there being any protests by white people when OJ Simpson was found not guilty for murdering two people. I do remember an editorial in TIME Magazine which showed a picture of a room that looked like a lobby during the moment of the not guilty verdict being reached in the OJ trial, and all the black people were out of their feet with their fists raised in victory and smiles on their faces, while all the white people were somberly still seated and looking disappointed or indifferent. The caption read “A picture worth a thousand words? People looking on at the time of the verdict of the OJ Simpson trial.”
Anyway, back to the case of George Zimmerman, I get why there were protests, but at the same time, I think that if people were paying attention to the case, they frankly didn’t have much reason to protest, because the conclusion to the trial became extremely transparently predictable once the groundwork for determining the verdict were established. It would be one thing if people were protesting the poor way in which deciding what should be judged upon, but they’re not. They’re protesting the simple notion that George Zimmerman is allowed to be free because the person he killed was black, and nothing else. Unless they were protesting that the direction of the trial were allowed and steered into the direction it went because Trayvon Martin was black, and that would be some slightly more meta shit, but frankly their signs and chants don’t seem to indicate such.
I’m not going to claim that I definitively know everything about the case, because it’s quite the contrary. If you asked me before the trial started, I would have figured that it was as much a layup as there ever could be, because it was a not-black guy killing a black guy. But to some regard, the media did its job, and I ended up picking up enough bits and pieces of the whole debacle to become somewhat interested, and it was on every television at the gym (that’s employed by 90% black guys hmm) that couldn’t be controlled by users, to where I could see how things progressed on a daily basis.
What I do know, is that the prosecution equipped themselves with spoons going into a knife fight. Whenever I hear the term “star witness,” I imagine a person who can essentially break a trial, or at least swing it decisively towards the side they’re on. Instead the prosecution brings out a 19-year old girl, and I’ll use the description I read on Barstool, because it’s pretty spot on, that looked like Precious with E. Honda’s top-knot. The defense snuffed her out like whenever one WCW superstar ran to the ring to defend another guy from the nWo, but then got destroyed by all ten other nWo members. Not only was she not given any preparation of what to expect by being on the stand by the prosecution, it would be revealed that she could barely speak English, and was incapable of reading cursive handwriting (seriously?). The rest of the internet then took great relish in dismantling her themselves, with prejudice, photoshopping her to hell and back, and pointing out her Twitter account where she essentially admits to underage drinking, drunkeness and taking pictures of her shiny painted nails while waiting to go on the stand.
And then there’s whole “what exactly is the trial trying to determine” thing. I have to imagine that there are all sorts of things that George Zimmerman could have been found guilty of.
- Did George Zimmerman provoke the altercation? Guilty.
- Did George Zimmerman shoot Trayvon Martin? Guilty.
- Did George Zimmerman kill Trayvon Martin? Guilty.
I’m not going to pretend like I know how the legal system works, and I’m sorry if anyone is offended by my naivety in regards to it, but it sure seems like the prosecution either were completely inept, or allowed the defense to steer the entire trial into dodging all of these factors when it came to the time for verdict. Quite possibly both. But it seems to a naïve person like myself, that there has to have been a conclusion where George Zimmerman doesn’t get off 100% scot-free like he is now. Even if it’s some jail time or some probation of some sort, it doesn’t change the fact that he still provoked the altercation in the first place, it’s hard to believe that he’s going to walk away from this as a completely free man (legally; we all know the Black Panthers or some other radical group has him on their shit list now).
Instead, as I listened to the closing statements of the defense, I knew precisely how this was going to end up. When the jury was essentially instructed to make a guilty/not guilty verdict on just the notion of if George Zimmerman was allowed to defend himself, it pretty much was over right there. I kind of wish that I heard the closing statements of the prosecution, but I have to imagine that anything other than the speech given by Matthew McConaughey from A Time to Kill wasn’t going to help their cause.
Now that I’ve talked this through in my head, and in text, I actually might have to give some credence to the protesters possibly protesting the right thing. They probably realized where this was headed too, and had 16 hours while the jury “deliberated” to make their signs and prepare for protesting, which is why they were out there so quickly after the verdict was made. And if I’m the jury, they took 16 hours to make a decision that probably took 16 minutes, so that they could deliberately end in the middle of the night so that the protestors might be in lesser numbers and tired, and it’s easier to slip away in the night than in the day time. And that could make me, as a protestor just a little bit more angry, too.
But back to the protesting, it still seems silly that they’re essentially protesting about blacks being unfairly treated. If they were a little more specific, I’d be more willing to give them some credit, but it’s just more of the same song and dance from whenever any blacks end up on the wrong side of any legal matter. If they really wanted to be taken seriously, they should be protesting against the state of Florida and how inept the prosecution was, and something along those specific terms. But by simply making the broad assumption that it’s strictly a race thing, on a national level, it’s hard to be taken seriously, when this seems to happen on a regular basis.
Regardless, I don’t think protests actually ever solve anything, other than making large groups of people look butthurt about a decision made by a few that affect a lot. It’s not necessarily always fair, but hey that’s life. The only times protests seem to have a chance at accomplishing anything is when the people doing the protesting are people that provide useful services or goods, and they’re protesting at times in which they should be providing useful services or goods, but aren’t, because they’re protesting. Eventually someone will give in, because people want the useful services or goods, or the people who provide them realize that they need to get back to work lest they lose everything in the end.
But for the people protesting the verdict to George Zimmerman? At like midnight, in Florida? Not really a smart idea. Anywhere else in the country, protesting on a weekend? Not really that useful either. If they really want to make an impact, they need to save their protesting for like Monday afternoon, and do it on a major street, like in the middle of it. Block traffic. Actually impact someone’s objective, and get noticed. And have enough numbers to where the overtaxed police ranks of wherever, America can’t possibly arrest everyone, and simply just want you to go away.
Honestly, I’d hate to live my life with a permanent persecution complex embedded into my brain. Personally I believe the world doesn’t give a flying flippidy floo about anyone, and it’s simply the ones that work the hardest at taking care of themselves and their own business, that figure out how to live their lives thinking that the world doesn’t have to; because they’re doing it themselves.
If there’s anything to be concerned about after this trial, it’s how incompetent the court system is. That being said, I’d be genuinely concerned that the that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev might be found not guilty for contributing to the deaths of all the people he killed during the Boston Marathon. The only saving grace the country has to that trial, is the fact that it’s not being held in the state of Florida.
