Tuesday, July 16, 2013 5:03:28 AM
No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter
By Tim Wise
Posted on July 14, 2013
You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.
I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because you saw him, and now you know he’s there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.
Last night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget — because I already know she will not — my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and — as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her — fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails — with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold — to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.
To watch her crumble, eyes swollen with tears too salty, too voluminous for her daddy to wipe away? Well now that is but the latest of my heartbreaks; to have to hold her, and tell her that everything will be OK, and to hear her respond, “No it won’t be!” Because see, even though she learned last night about injustice and even more than she knew before about the racial fault lines that divide her nation, she is still a bit too young to fully comprehend the notion of the marathon, as opposed to the sprint; to understand that this is a very long race, indeed that even 26.2 miles is but a crawl in the long distance struggle for justice. And that if she is as bothered by what she sees as it appears, well now she will have to put on some incredibly strong running shoes, because this, my dear, is the work.
This is why daddy does what he does. Now you know.
And yes, I am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.
Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race — or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers” — are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe — against all evidence — is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.
Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds — if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase — the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names — were I to list them — would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.
Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get — and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me — is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black — and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white — then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.
And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.
This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions — talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store — that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.
Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate — and didn’t see the need to — between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.
And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.
But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.
But we know, if we are remotely awake, that this same logic would never be used to protect a black person accused of such an act. Let’s travel back to 1984 shall we, and hypothetically apply this logic to the Bernhard Goetz case in a little thought experiment so as to illustrate the point.
Goetz, as you’ll recall, was the white man who, afraid of young black men because he had been previously mugged, decided to shoot several such youth on a subway. They had not threatened him. They had asked him for money, and apparently teased him a bit. But at no point did they threaten him. Nonetheless, he drew his weapon and fired several rounds into them, even (according to his own initial account, later recanted), shooting a second time at one of the young men, after saying, “You don’t look so bad, here, have another.”
Goetz, predictably, was seen as a hero by the majority of the nation’s whites, if polls and anecdotal evidence are to be believed. He was a Dirty Harry-like vigilante, fighting back against crime, and more to the point, black crime. Ultimately he too would successfully plead self-defense and face conviction only on a minor weapons charge.
But let us pretend for a second that after Goetz pulled his weapon and began to fire at the young men on that subway, one of them had perhaps pulled his own firearm. Now as it turns out none of the boys had one, but let’s just pretend. And let’s say that one of them pulled a weapon precisely because, after all, he and his friends were being fired upon and so, fearing for his life, he opted to defend himself against this deranged gunman. And let’s pretend that the young man managed to hit Goetz, perhaps paralyzing him as Goetz did, in fact, to one of his victims. Does anyone seriously believe that that young black man would have been able to press a successful self-defense claim in court the way Goetz ultimately did? Or in the court of white public opinion the way Zimmerman has? If you would answer yes to this question you are either engaged in an act of self-delusion so profound as to defy imagination, or you are so deeply committed to fooling others as to make you truly dangerous.
But we are not fooled.
We don’t even have to travel back thirty years to the Goetz case to make the point, in fact. We can stay here, with this case. If everything about that night in Sanford had been the same, but Martin, fearing this stranger following him — the latter not identifying himself at any point as Neighborhood Watch — had pulled a weapon and shot George Zimmerman out of a genuine fear that he was going to be harmed (and even if Zimmerman had confronted him in a way so as to make that fear more than speculative), would the claim of self-defense have rung true for those who are so convinced by it in this case? Would this jury have likely concluded that Trayvon had had a right to defend himself against the perceived violent intentions of George Zimmerman?
Oh, and would it have taken so long for Martin to be arrested in the first place, had he been the shooter? Would he have been granted bail? Would he have been given the benefit of the doubt the way Zimmerman was by virtually every white conservative in America of note? And remember, those white folks were rushing to proclaim the shooting of Martin justified even before there had been any claim made by Zimmerman that Trayvon had attacked him. Before anyone had heard Zimmerman’s version of the story, much of white America, and virtually its entire right flank had already decided that Martin must have been up to no good because he wore a hoodie (in the rain, imagine), and was tall (actually according to the coroner he was 5’11? not 6’2? or 6’4? as some have claimed), and that because of those previous break-ins, Zimmerman had every right to confront him.
No, Martin-as-shooter would never have benefitted from these public pronouncements of innocence the way Zimmerman did.
Because apparently black people don’t have a right to defend themselves. Which is why Marissa Alexander [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/19/marissa-alexander-gets-20_n_1530035.html ], a woman who had suffered violence at the hands of her husband (by his own admission in fact), was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot into a wall when she felt he was about to yet again harm her.
And so it continues. Year after year and case after case it continues, with black life viewed as expendable in the service of white fear, with black males in particular (but many a black female as well and plenty of Latino folk too) marked as problems to be solved, rather than as children to be nurtured. And tonight, their parents will hold them and try to assure them that everything is going to be OK, even as they will have to worry again tomorrow that their black or brown child may represent the physical embodiment of white anxiety, and pay the ultimate price for that fact, either at the hands of a random loser with a law enforcement jones, or an actual cop doing the bidding of the state. In short, they will hold their children and lie to them, at least a little — and to themselves — because who doesn’t want their child to believe that everything will be alright?
But in calmer moments these parents of color will also tell their children the truth. That in fact everything is not going to be OK, unless we make it so. That justice is not an act of wish fulfillment but the product of resistance. Because black parents know these things like they know their names, and as a matter of survival they make sure their children know them too.
And if their children have to know them, then mine must know them as well.
And now they do.
If their children are to be allowed no innocence free from these concerns, then so too must mine sacrifice some of their naiveté upon the altar of truth.
And now they have.
So to the keepers of white supremacy, I should offer this final word. You can think of it as a word of caution. My oldest daughter knows who you are and saw what you did. You have made a new enemy. One day, you might wish you hadn’t.
*
Related Posts
Of Children and Inkblots: Trayvon Martin and the Psychopathology of Whiteness
http://www.timwise.org/2012/05/of-children-and-inkblots-trayvon-martin-and-the-psychopathology-of-whiteness/
Trayvon Martin, White America and the Return of Dred Scott
http://www.timwise.org/2012/03/trayvon-martin-white-america-and-the-return-of-dred-scott/
Trayvon Martin, White Denial and the Unacceptable Burden of Blackness in America
http://www.timwise.org/2012/03/trayvon-martin-white-denial-and-the-unacceptable-burden-of-blackness-in-america/
*
Copyright 2013 Tim Wise (emphasis in original)
http://www.timwise.org/2013/07/no-innocence-left-to-kill-racism-injustice-and-explaining-america-to-my-daughter/ [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-wise/george-zimmerman-racial-profiling-racism_b_3596475.html (with comments)]
--
'That Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Sting Any Less'
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/questlove/trayvon-martin-case-verdict_b_3601148.html [with comments]
--
Mark O'Mara: If George Zimmerman Were Black 'He Never Would've Been Charged With A Crime'
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/mark-omara-george-zimmerman-black_n_3593337.html [with embedded video, and (over 9,000) comments]
--
To My Unborn Sons: 'A Bounty Has Been Placed On Your Head. Your Price: Worthless'
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amber-walker/to-my-sons_b_3594295.html [with comments]
--
George Zimmerman Gun: Weapon Used To Kill Trayvon Martin Will Be Returned
07/13/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/13/george-zimmerman-gun_n_3593185.html [with (over 6,000) comments]
--
George Zimmerman Will Get His Gun Back, Mark O'Mara Says He Needs It 'Even More' Than Before
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/george-zimmerman-gun-back_n_3598228.html [with embedded video report, and (over 35,000) comments]
--
The Zimmerman Jury Told Young Black Men What We Already Knew
July 13, 2013
http://gawker.com/the-zimmerman-jury-told-young-black-men-what-we-already-770650992 [with comments]
--
July 14, 2013
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/07/get-out-of-jail-free.html [with comments]
--
George Zimmerman Considers Law School After Trayvon Martin Murder Acquittal, Close Friends Say
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/george-zimmerman-law-school_n_3595945.html [with embedded video report, and (over 7,000) comments]
--
Open season on black boys after a verdict like this
Calls for calm after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin are empty words for black families
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/14/open-season-black-boys-verdict [with comments]
--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/ny-daily-news-trayvon-martin_n_3597797.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
--
Robert Zimmerman Jr: 'What Makes People Angry Enough To Attack The Way Trayvon Did?'
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/robert-zimmerman-jr_n_3593739.html [with embedded video, and (over 12,000) comments]
--
White supremacy, meet black rage
How does black life come to have value in a white supremacist system, where the rules only apply to us?
Jul 14, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/14/white_supremacy_meet_black_rage/ [with comments]
--
No justice for Trayvon Martin
Our view: Racial prejudice and reckless self defense laws caused the death of an unarmed teen, and they conspired against any hope for a just outcome in George Zimmerman's trial
July 15, 2013
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-trayvon-martin-20130715,0,2185840.story [with comments]
--
Racism is every American’s problem
It's an easy punchline to blame Florida or the South for this horrible verdict. But the problem goes much deeper
Jul 14, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/14/racism_is_every_americans_problem/ [with comments]
--
Law and Justice and George Zimmerman
The exoneration of Travyon Martin's killer is a stark reminder of the limitations of our judicial systems and the choices we make about the laws under which we live.
Jul 13 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/law-and-justice-and-george-zimmerman/277772/ [with comments]
--
On The Killing Of Trayvon Martin By George Zimmerman
Jul 14 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/on-the-killing-of-trayvon-martin-by-george-zimmerman/277773/ [with comments]
--
Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice
[ http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/martin.asp ]
Jul 15 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice/277782/ [with comments]
--
Who's Afraid of Young Black Men?
How gender did (and didn't) affect the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial
Jul 15 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/07/whos-afraid-of-young-black-men/277788/ [with comments]
--
--
Trayvon could have been my son
July 14, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/14/opinion/granderson-zimmerman-verdict/ [with (over 5,000) comments]
--
The New American Way
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-handler/the-new-american-way_b_3599915.html [with comments]
--
Stolen Life: On the Meanings of Trayvon Martin
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-leon-roberts/stolen-life-the-meanings-_b_3595636.html [with comments]
--
Trayvon Martin 'Not Guilty' Verdict Sparks Hoodie Sunday At Black Churches
Rev. Lee speaks to his congregation on the morning after the "not guilty" verdict in the trial over the death of Trayvon Martin (pictured on right).
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/trayvon-martin-hoodie-sunday_n_3594302.html [with comments]
--
The Zimmerman Verdict and the Unity of the Church
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-carey/the-zimmerman-verdict-and_b_3595630.html [with comments]
--
Ramadan Reflection Day 6: Standing with Trayvon and Oday -- Race Relations in America
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/imam-khalid-latif/ramadan-reflection-day-6_b_3595576.html [with comments]
--
A Desired Eulogy: For Emmett, Virgil, Trayvon, and Jordan
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-w-waters/a-desired-eulogy-for-emme_b_3594325.html [with comments]
--
Hey, Newt, this is not a “lynch mob”!
Newt Gingrich insists Trayvon Martin protesters were "prepared to be a lynch mob." Here's a little history lesson
Jul 15, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/15/trayvon_protestors_are_not_a_lynch_mob/ [with comments]
--
Denied the Right to Be Young
By Eugene Robinson
Monday, 15 July 2013 12:46
Washington, DC -- Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.
Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have -- but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid.
George Zimmerman's acquittal was set in motion on Feb. 26, 2012, before Martin's body was cold. When Sanford, Fla., police arrived on the scene, they encountered a grown man who acknowledged killing an unarmed 17-year-old boy. They did not arrest the man or test him for drug or alcohol use. They conducted a less-than-energetic search for forensic evidence. They hardly bothered to look for witnesses.
Only a national outcry forced authorities to investigate the killing seriously. Even after six weeks, evidence was found to justify arresting Zimmerman, charging him with second-degree murder and putting him on trial. But the chance of dispassionately and definitively establishing what happened that night was probably lost. The only complete narrative of what transpired was Zimmerman's.
Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin -- young, black, hooded sweatshirt -- as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.
The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his father's girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.
To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter. The six women on the jury disagreed.
Those jurors also knew that Martin, at the time of his death, was just three weeks past his 17th birthday. But black boys in this country are not allowed to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace.
I don't know if the jury, which included no African-Americans, consciously or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking -- there's really no other word. But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors initially did.
The assumption underlying their ho-hum approach to the case was that Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin -- young, male, black -- did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand-to-hand struggle but Martin -- young, male, black -- would not.
If anyone wonders why African-Americans feel so passionately about this case, it's because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It's because we know their adolescent bravura is just that -- an imitation of manhood, not the real thing.
We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be between a child's fear and a child's immature idea of manly behavior. We know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or fight.
And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man's pride, but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?
The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it -- and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?
Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.
Copyright 2013 The Washington Post
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17571-denied-the-right-to-be-young [with comments]
--
Milwaukee man, 76, to stand trial for shooting black 13-year-old neighbor he accused of burglary
John Henry Spooner, now 76, is shown at left in his mugshot following the May 31, 2012, shooting. At right, Patricia Larry holds a photo of Darius Simmons.
Darius Simmons, 13
[ http://seemydeath.com/murders/3388-darius-simmons-13-was-shot-and-killed-by-john-henry-spooner-75-in-what-is-believe-to-be-race-related.html ]
John Henry Spooner’s shooting of Darius Simmons was called ‘vigilantism and rogue police behavior’ by one civil rights leader. Spooner implicated the teen in a burglary before shooting him as the boy took out the trash in broad daylight last year.
July 15, 2013
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/milwaukee-man-76-stand-trial-shooting-killing-black-13-year-old-neighbor-article-1.1399107 [with comments]
--
NRA's Ted Nugent Jokes About Gunning Down South Central LA Residents Like Feral Hogs
07/12/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/nras-ted-nugent-jokes-abo_b_3586175.html [with comments]; http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/ted-nugent-guitarist-and-gun-lover-rocks-the-political-world/2013/07/02/7bb236dc-d203-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html [with comments]
--
Nugent threatens to take up arms against Obama
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/01/22/nugent-threatens-to-take-up-arms-against-obama/ ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilUKCqmXwTQ
--
Roberto Calderoli, Italian Politician, Compares First Black Minister Cecile Kyenge To Orangutan
New Minister of Integration Cecile Kyenge attends the swearing in ceremony in Rome of the new government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta on April 28, 2013.
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/roberto-calderoli-organutan-cecile-kyenge_n_3594320.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
--
in addition to (linked in) the post to which this post is a reply (and preceding) and (other) following, see (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=49140201 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72657890 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=78915505 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=82642581 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84699542 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85825396 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=86925579 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88558353 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88594801 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89915551 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89924109 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89925991 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89965181 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89966454 and following
By Tim Wise
Posted on July 14, 2013
You remember, forever and forever, that moment when you first discover the cruelties and injustices of the world, and having been ill-prepared for them, your heart breaks open.
I mean really discover them, and for yourself; not because someone else told you to see the elephant standing, gigantic and unrelenting in the middle of your room, but because you saw him, and now you know he’s there, and will never go away until you attack him, and with a vengeance.
Last night, and I am writing it down so that I will not forget — because I already know she will not — my oldest daughter, who attained the age of 12 only eleven days ago, became an American. Not in the legal sense. She was already that, born here, and — as a white child in a nation set up for people just like her — fully entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof, without much question or drama. But now she is American in the fullest and most horrible sense of that word, by which I mean she has been truly introduced to the workings of the system of which she is both a part, and, at the same time, merely an inheritor. A system that fails — with a near-unanimity almost incomprehensible to behold — to render justice to black peoples, the family of Trayvon Martin being only the latest battered by the machinations of American justice, but with all certainty not the last.
To watch her crumble, eyes swollen with tears too salty, too voluminous for her daddy to wipe away? Well now that is but the latest of my heartbreaks; to have to hold her, and tell her that everything will be OK, and to hear her respond, “No it won’t be!” Because see, even though she learned last night about injustice and even more than she knew before about the racial fault lines that divide her nation, she is still a bit too young to fully comprehend the notion of the marathon, as opposed to the sprint; to understand that this is a very long race, indeed that even 26.2 miles is but a crawl in the long distance struggle for justice. And that if she is as bothered by what she sees as it appears, well now she will have to put on some incredibly strong running shoes, because this, my dear, is the work.
This is why daddy does what he does. Now you know.
And yes, I am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.
Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race — or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers” — are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe — against all evidence — is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.
Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds — if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase — the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names — were I to list them — would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.
Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get — and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me — is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black — and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white — then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.
And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.
This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions — talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store — that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.
Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate — and didn’t see the need to — between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.
And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.
But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.
But we know, if we are remotely awake, that this same logic would never be used to protect a black person accused of such an act. Let’s travel back to 1984 shall we, and hypothetically apply this logic to the Bernhard Goetz case in a little thought experiment so as to illustrate the point.
Goetz, as you’ll recall, was the white man who, afraid of young black men because he had been previously mugged, decided to shoot several such youth on a subway. They had not threatened him. They had asked him for money, and apparently teased him a bit. But at no point did they threaten him. Nonetheless, he drew his weapon and fired several rounds into them, even (according to his own initial account, later recanted), shooting a second time at one of the young men, after saying, “You don’t look so bad, here, have another.”
Goetz, predictably, was seen as a hero by the majority of the nation’s whites, if polls and anecdotal evidence are to be believed. He was a Dirty Harry-like vigilante, fighting back against crime, and more to the point, black crime. Ultimately he too would successfully plead self-defense and face conviction only on a minor weapons charge.
But let us pretend for a second that after Goetz pulled his weapon and began to fire at the young men on that subway, one of them had perhaps pulled his own firearm. Now as it turns out none of the boys had one, but let’s just pretend. And let’s say that one of them pulled a weapon precisely because, after all, he and his friends were being fired upon and so, fearing for his life, he opted to defend himself against this deranged gunman. And let’s pretend that the young man managed to hit Goetz, perhaps paralyzing him as Goetz did, in fact, to one of his victims. Does anyone seriously believe that that young black man would have been able to press a successful self-defense claim in court the way Goetz ultimately did? Or in the court of white public opinion the way Zimmerman has? If you would answer yes to this question you are either engaged in an act of self-delusion so profound as to defy imagination, or you are so deeply committed to fooling others as to make you truly dangerous.
But we are not fooled.
We don’t even have to travel back thirty years to the Goetz case to make the point, in fact. We can stay here, with this case. If everything about that night in Sanford had been the same, but Martin, fearing this stranger following him — the latter not identifying himself at any point as Neighborhood Watch — had pulled a weapon and shot George Zimmerman out of a genuine fear that he was going to be harmed (and even if Zimmerman had confronted him in a way so as to make that fear more than speculative), would the claim of self-defense have rung true for those who are so convinced by it in this case? Would this jury have likely concluded that Trayvon had had a right to defend himself against the perceived violent intentions of George Zimmerman?
Oh, and would it have taken so long for Martin to be arrested in the first place, had he been the shooter? Would he have been granted bail? Would he have been given the benefit of the doubt the way Zimmerman was by virtually every white conservative in America of note? And remember, those white folks were rushing to proclaim the shooting of Martin justified even before there had been any claim made by Zimmerman that Trayvon had attacked him. Before anyone had heard Zimmerman’s version of the story, much of white America, and virtually its entire right flank had already decided that Martin must have been up to no good because he wore a hoodie (in the rain, imagine), and was tall (actually according to the coroner he was 5’11? not 6’2? or 6’4? as some have claimed), and that because of those previous break-ins, Zimmerman had every right to confront him.
No, Martin-as-shooter would never have benefitted from these public pronouncements of innocence the way Zimmerman did.
Because apparently black people don’t have a right to defend themselves. Which is why Marissa Alexander [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/19/marissa-alexander-gets-20_n_1530035.html ], a woman who had suffered violence at the hands of her husband (by his own admission in fact), was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a warning shot into a wall when she felt he was about to yet again harm her.
And so it continues. Year after year and case after case it continues, with black life viewed as expendable in the service of white fear, with black males in particular (but many a black female as well and plenty of Latino folk too) marked as problems to be solved, rather than as children to be nurtured. And tonight, their parents will hold them and try to assure them that everything is going to be OK, even as they will have to worry again tomorrow that their black or brown child may represent the physical embodiment of white anxiety, and pay the ultimate price for that fact, either at the hands of a random loser with a law enforcement jones, or an actual cop doing the bidding of the state. In short, they will hold their children and lie to them, at least a little — and to themselves — because who doesn’t want their child to believe that everything will be alright?
But in calmer moments these parents of color will also tell their children the truth. That in fact everything is not going to be OK, unless we make it so. That justice is not an act of wish fulfillment but the product of resistance. Because black parents know these things like they know their names, and as a matter of survival they make sure their children know them too.
And if their children have to know them, then mine must know them as well.
And now they do.
If their children are to be allowed no innocence free from these concerns, then so too must mine sacrifice some of their naiveté upon the altar of truth.
And now they have.
So to the keepers of white supremacy, I should offer this final word. You can think of it as a word of caution. My oldest daughter knows who you are and saw what you did. You have made a new enemy. One day, you might wish you hadn’t.
*
Related Posts
Of Children and Inkblots: Trayvon Martin and the Psychopathology of Whiteness
http://www.timwise.org/2012/05/of-children-and-inkblots-trayvon-martin-and-the-psychopathology-of-whiteness/
Trayvon Martin, White America and the Return of Dred Scott
http://www.timwise.org/2012/03/trayvon-martin-white-america-and-the-return-of-dred-scott/
Trayvon Martin, White Denial and the Unacceptable Burden of Blackness in America
http://www.timwise.org/2012/03/trayvon-martin-white-denial-and-the-unacceptable-burden-of-blackness-in-america/
*
Copyright 2013 Tim Wise (emphasis in original)
http://www.timwise.org/2013/07/no-innocence-left-to-kill-racism-injustice-and-explaining-america-to-my-daughter/ [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-wise/george-zimmerman-racial-profiling-racism_b_3596475.html (with comments)]
--
'That Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Sting Any Less'
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/questlove/trayvon-martin-case-verdict_b_3601148.html [with comments]
--
Mark O'Mara: If George Zimmerman Were Black 'He Never Would've Been Charged With A Crime'
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/mark-omara-george-zimmerman-black_n_3593337.html [with embedded video, and (over 9,000) comments]
--
To My Unborn Sons: 'A Bounty Has Been Placed On Your Head. Your Price: Worthless'
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amber-walker/to-my-sons_b_3594295.html [with comments]
--
George Zimmerman Gun: Weapon Used To Kill Trayvon Martin Will Be Returned
07/13/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/13/george-zimmerman-gun_n_3593185.html [with (over 6,000) comments]
--
George Zimmerman Will Get His Gun Back, Mark O'Mara Says He Needs It 'Even More' Than Before
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/george-zimmerman-gun-back_n_3598228.html [with embedded video report, and (over 35,000) comments]
--
The Zimmerman Jury Told Young Black Men What We Already Knew
July 13, 2013
http://gawker.com/the-zimmerman-jury-told-young-black-men-what-we-already-770650992 [with comments]
--
July 14, 2013
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/07/get-out-of-jail-free.html [with comments]
--
George Zimmerman Considers Law School After Trayvon Martin Murder Acquittal, Close Friends Say
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/george-zimmerman-law-school_n_3595945.html [with embedded video report, and (over 7,000) comments]
--
Open season on black boys after a verdict like this
Calls for calm after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin are empty words for black families
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/14/open-season-black-boys-verdict [with comments]
--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/ny-daily-news-trayvon-martin_n_3597797.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
--
Robert Zimmerman Jr: 'What Makes People Angry Enough To Attack The Way Trayvon Did?'
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/robert-zimmerman-jr_n_3593739.html [with embedded video, and (over 12,000) comments]
--
White supremacy, meet black rage
How does black life come to have value in a white supremacist system, where the rules only apply to us?
Jul 14, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/14/white_supremacy_meet_black_rage/ [with comments]
--
No justice for Trayvon Martin
Our view: Racial prejudice and reckless self defense laws caused the death of an unarmed teen, and they conspired against any hope for a just outcome in George Zimmerman's trial
July 15, 2013
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-trayvon-martin-20130715,0,2185840.story [with comments]
--
Racism is every American’s problem
It's an easy punchline to blame Florida or the South for this horrible verdict. But the problem goes much deeper
Jul 14, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/14/racism_is_every_americans_problem/ [with comments]
--
Law and Justice and George Zimmerman
The exoneration of Travyon Martin's killer is a stark reminder of the limitations of our judicial systems and the choices we make about the laws under which we live.
Jul 13 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/law-and-justice-and-george-zimmerman/277772/ [with comments]
--
On The Killing Of Trayvon Martin By George Zimmerman
Jul 14 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/on-the-killing-of-trayvon-martin-by-george-zimmerman/277773/ [with comments]
--
Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice
[ http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/martin.asp ]
Jul 15 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice/277782/ [with comments]
--
Who's Afraid of Young Black Men?
How gender did (and didn't) affect the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial
Jul 15 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/07/whos-afraid-of-young-black-men/277788/ [with comments]
--
--
Trayvon could have been my son
July 14, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/14/opinion/granderson-zimmerman-verdict/ [with (over 5,000) comments]
--
The New American Way
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-handler/the-new-american-way_b_3599915.html [with comments]
--
Stolen Life: On the Meanings of Trayvon Martin
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-leon-roberts/stolen-life-the-meanings-_b_3595636.html [with comments]
--
Trayvon Martin 'Not Guilty' Verdict Sparks Hoodie Sunday At Black Churches
Rev. Lee speaks to his congregation on the morning after the "not guilty" verdict in the trial over the death of Trayvon Martin (pictured on right).
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/trayvon-martin-hoodie-sunday_n_3594302.html [with comments]
--
The Zimmerman Verdict and the Unity of the Church
07/15/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-carey/the-zimmerman-verdict-and_b_3595630.html [with comments]
--
Ramadan Reflection Day 6: Standing with Trayvon and Oday -- Race Relations in America
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/imam-khalid-latif/ramadan-reflection-day-6_b_3595576.html [with comments]
--
A Desired Eulogy: For Emmett, Virgil, Trayvon, and Jordan
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-w-waters/a-desired-eulogy-for-emme_b_3594325.html [with comments]
--
Hey, Newt, this is not a “lynch mob”!
Newt Gingrich insists Trayvon Martin protesters were "prepared to be a lynch mob." Here's a little history lesson
Jul 15, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/15/trayvon_protestors_are_not_a_lynch_mob/ [with comments]
--
Denied the Right to Be Young
By Eugene Robinson
Monday, 15 July 2013 12:46
Washington, DC -- Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.
Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have -- but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid.
George Zimmerman's acquittal was set in motion on Feb. 26, 2012, before Martin's body was cold. When Sanford, Fla., police arrived on the scene, they encountered a grown man who acknowledged killing an unarmed 17-year-old boy. They did not arrest the man or test him for drug or alcohol use. They conducted a less-than-energetic search for forensic evidence. They hardly bothered to look for witnesses.
Only a national outcry forced authorities to investigate the killing seriously. Even after six weeks, evidence was found to justify arresting Zimmerman, charging him with second-degree murder and putting him on trial. But the chance of dispassionately and definitively establishing what happened that night was probably lost. The only complete narrative of what transpired was Zimmerman's.
Jurors knew that Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin -- young, black, hooded sweatshirt -- as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.
The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his father's girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.
To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter. The six women on the jury disagreed.
Those jurors also knew that Martin, at the time of his death, was just three weeks past his 17th birthday. But black boys in this country are not allowed to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace.
I don't know if the jury, which included no African-Americans, consciously or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking -- there's really no other word. But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors initially did.
The assumption underlying their ho-hum approach to the case was that Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin -- young, male, black -- did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand-to-hand struggle but Martin -- young, male, black -- would not.
If anyone wonders why African-Americans feel so passionately about this case, it's because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It's because we know their adolescent bravura is just that -- an imitation of manhood, not the real thing.
We know how frightened our sons would be, walking home alone on a rainy night and realizing they were being followed. We know how torn they would be between a child's fear and a child's immature idea of manly behavior. We know how they would struggle to decide the right course of action, flight or fight.
And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man's pride, but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?
The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it -- and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?
Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.
Copyright 2013 The Washington Post
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17571-denied-the-right-to-be-young [with comments]
--
Milwaukee man, 76, to stand trial for shooting black 13-year-old neighbor he accused of burglary
John Henry Spooner, now 76, is shown at left in his mugshot following the May 31, 2012, shooting. At right, Patricia Larry holds a photo of Darius Simmons.
Darius Simmons, 13
[ http://seemydeath.com/murders/3388-darius-simmons-13-was-shot-and-killed-by-john-henry-spooner-75-in-what-is-believe-to-be-race-related.html ]
John Henry Spooner’s shooting of Darius Simmons was called ‘vigilantism and rogue police behavior’ by one civil rights leader. Spooner implicated the teen in a burglary before shooting him as the boy took out the trash in broad daylight last year.
July 15, 2013
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/milwaukee-man-76-stand-trial-shooting-killing-black-13-year-old-neighbor-article-1.1399107 [with comments]
--
NRA's Ted Nugent Jokes About Gunning Down South Central LA Residents Like Feral Hogs
07/12/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/nras-ted-nugent-jokes-abo_b_3586175.html [with comments]; http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/ted-nugent-guitarist-and-gun-lover-rocks-the-political-world/2013/07/02/7bb236dc-d203-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html [with comments]
--
Nugent threatens to take up arms against Obama
January 22, 2013
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/01/22/nugent-threatens-to-take-up-arms-against-obama/ ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilUKCqmXwTQ
--
Roberto Calderoli, Italian Politician, Compares First Black Minister Cecile Kyenge To Orangutan
New Minister of Integration Cecile Kyenge attends the swearing in ceremony in Rome of the new government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta on April 28, 2013.
07/14/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/14/roberto-calderoli-organutan-cecile-kyenge_n_3594320.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
--
in addition to (linked in) the post to which this post is a reply (and preceding) and (other) following, see (linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=49140201 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72657890 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=78915505 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=82642581 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84699542 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85825396 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=86925579 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88558353 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=88594801 and preceding and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89915551 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89924109 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89925991 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89965181 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89966454 and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
