Depending on who’s counting, either a thousand or almost two thousand people showed up yesterday in my fair city to march for justice for Trayvon Martin. The reason this is remarkable is that reporters can’t remember the last time anything like that number of people marched for any issue. Rochester is not a big protest town. When something gets this big here, it’s a big deal.
No Myth
by @mistermix.bsky.social| 33 Comments
This post is in: Post-racial America
El Cid
I feel threatened. Can I go shoot all those people?
Schlemizel
@El Cid:
First go start a fight with them. Then, as you are getting your ass kicked you can shoot them & claim self defense.
El Cid
@Schlemizel: Yeah, but since I’m a white male, no one has to question me or anything, so if need be I can just say they were attacking me, I can just say we were fighting, and my word will be accepted.
Elizabelle
I’m not surprised. Ever since I heard about Trayvon’s shooting, I have felt grief, real grief, every time I think of him. The waste. Maybe a lot of people feel that way.
Straw? Meet camel’s back.
MattF
I think the whole narrative makes people uneasy– ‘Is this really the country I live in?’
And, also, I think that Obama put his finger on this unease in his comment. And the ugliness of the winger reaction to Obama’s comment is just, as @Elizabelle says, straw meeting camel’s back.
the Conster (f/k/a Cat Lady)
I just hope they all get out and vote in November, also too.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Listening to the radio this morning, they said it was a couple of hundred people. It just goes to show you can’t believe anything from the media these days.
Elizabelle
Yippee. K-Thug spells out ALEC’s reach for you. Will break this into several comments, since no carriage return.
Elizabelle
Dr. Krugman continues, in today’s NYTimes column:
jeffreyw
Unintended consequences.
amk
@jeffreyw: lol. perfect.
Elizabelle
More of Dr. Krugman’s “Lobbyists, Guns and Money”:
Krugman then has an interesting passage on the American penal-industrial complex and the warping of criminal justice; the heightening of fear; ALEC’s intervention to separate minorities and the poor from their voting rights.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jeffreyw: She’s even got her pinky up.
Linda Featheringill
It is a big deal that Zimmerman could just chase after and kill someone who was no threat to him at all.
And I find that I can’t string together words that would be adequate for this situation.
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: But the gun isn’t pink…
ETA: But it is the perfect statement.
liberal
@Linda Featheringill:
Yeah, there’s most definitely a racial angle to it. But there’s also an “OMG! The state of FL has apparently legalized homocide!” angle to it.
Dave
Heard on the Today show this AM there’s some pro-Zimmerman rally in Sanford today. Organizers hope the turnout will be higher than the 25k that showed up for the Martin rally.
Good luck with that, boys…
Ben Cisco
And, right on cue, TeaNN is yapping about the New Black Panther Party offering a “reward” for Zimmerman – just saw a flash of this in the breakroom.
Tone In DC
@El Cid:
LULz.
Face
Funny how all the legislators in FL that wrote this bill continue to say that the law does not apply to what Zimmerman did. Yet the cops continue to say it does, and a cursory reading of the statute seems to back the police. Seems that the FL GOP forgot to, ya know, actually read the pile of shit the NRA asked them to pass.
Responsibility, how does that work?
El Cid
@Face: I keep bringing up to my “conservative” friends — you know, the ones who blather ignorantly about what “is” and “isn’t” in the Constitution but they do know the phrase “as written” — and suddenly it’s all postmodern literary theory, about how you can’t merely depend on the writing of the law, and you can’t just go around codifying everything, which, you know, kind of makes it pointless to be passing a law in the first place if you don’t give a shit about what the law you’re about to pass says.
Now, of course, in reality it’s all just duplicity, including the subconscious variety, in which since they like what they think is happening given the law as written, they don’t want anything changed.
A few of them, I swear, have never even thought about it when I suggest to them that some crazed nitwit could shoot their wife or kid and then just say they were threatened, and get away with it, and then they’d blame liberals for letting the crooks off on “technicalities”.
Nicole
There’s a rally in Union Square tonight at 7. I’ll try to take pictures.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
And our mayor posted a hoodie pic of himself on FB. Here; I expect it will cause quite the ruckus in the comments section of the very red rag where it’s shown. But I can’t say with certainty as I will not check them.
I agree that it’s huge. There’s an LA Times story today that Zimmmerman expected it to “blow over” (WTF?) but I’ve exhausted my complimentary reading there and don’t know (or have forgotten)the workaround.
Brachiator
It is good to hear how this story continues to resonate with decent people.
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
You can get to some NY Times stories linked from Twitter, maybe Facebook, even if it goes over the paywall limit. This may also work for the LA Times.
.
Sad to see how news media, by erecting paywalls, look for ways to make their sites totally irrelevant.
.
Bubblegum Tate
Meanwhile, in California: Muslim mother beaten to death, left with note saying, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.”
Just good patriotic Americans enjoying their right to free speech, no doubt.
Brachiator
ETA. Wow. Under IE8, the paragraph formatting is super funky messed up.
.
badpoetry
In any case, I like the Michael Penn reference. I’m ranting while I’m raving, there’s nothing here worth saving.
BGinCHI
Students at my university are doing a “wear a hoodie” protest this week. Yeah, it’s a big deal. We have protests but this is pretty amazing that people would do this over a shooting of one person in FL.
Something stirring…..
liberal
@Brachiator:
The NYT paywall is a joke to get around…just highlight and delete.
tdd
I need a cookie for the mobile site.
serge
“When something gets this big here, it’s a big deal.” Yeah…it is, to quote Joe B., a “big fucking deal.”
I understand my confederated “state” of South Carolina now has a Stand Your Ground statute. I didn’t know that. I’ve never handled a gun, but surely that doesn’t affect my ability/right to go get one, correct?
I feel pretty threatened by every politician in this state. I would never use the rights granted me under this bill to retaliate against a politician, but what if I were the “don’t taze me, bro” guy and some goon was threatening me with a potentially lethal device? Would I have the right to pull out my newly purchased derringer and pop a cap in the goon’s ass?
These laws are, on their merits, nutzoid and delivered in packages to state legislatures with a little love note from Wayne LaPierre, or Pepe LePew, or whomever. As with recycling, we should “Repeal, Refuse, Refudiate (thanks, Sarah).
smith
The smearing of Trayvon Martin has just begun. All of a sudden these mysterious witnesses are just now coming forward claiming that Trayvon was beating down on Zimmerman and it was Zimmerman crying for help. Of course these eyewitness “accounts” were nowhere around two weeks ago.
Also there are fake Trayvon Martin Facebook photos being circulated showing him with saggy pants and flashing gang signs – the Miami Herald has debunked the photos as being Trayvon. They were created by Stormfront, that beacon of racial integrity.
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2012/03/trayvon_martin_no_thats_not_hi.php
The Rochester rally really was something considering only 150 people showed up for a rally sponsored by the Catholic bishops to protest birth control and there were over 2,000 for Trayvon Martin.
And who the hell cares that Trayvon was suspended for marijuana? Name me a 17-year-old that doesn’t try marijuana. Zimmerman actually has assault charges on his record.
A Farmer
So how does that compare to the “religious freedom” rallies the bishops organized on Friday. Buffalo had like 600 for that. Just curious, as our parish priest inferred that whoever showed up in Dayton wouldn’t get any media coverage because of liberal bias against the church.