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You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Readership Capture / ABL Talks About #TrayvonMartin on the AlterNet Radio Hour with Joshua Holland

ABL Talks About #TrayvonMartin on the AlterNet Radio Hour with Joshua Holland

by Imani Gandy (ABL)|  April 1, 201210:54 pm| 32 Comments

This post is in: Readership Capture

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Today, I yammered about the Trayvon Martin case on the AlterNet Radio Hour, hosted by Joshua Holland.

Actually, I yammered via Skype on Friday, but the show aired this afternoon on We Act Radio in D.C.  I, of course, streamed it on my iPad while tweeting about it, because it’s the twenty-first century and I’m nothing if not a slave to my iCrap.

The show is a good one, and has the added bonus of being fully-estrogenated.  Three guests. Three women.

I’m second up (at around the 28 minute mark), after Dahlia Lithwick and before Sara Robinson. So… semper uteri! — or something.

Just roll the damn tape!

Check this out on Chirbit

You’re welcome.

(I was also on the Hal Sparks Radio Show on Saturday. You can check that out here, if you like.)

[via AlterNet]

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Reader Interactions

32Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    April 1, 2012 at 11:03 pm

    I’ve just been reading a rather long NYT story about Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and their encounter. I wonder what you, as a lawyer, make of this claim.

    Sanford police have said that once Mr. Zimmerman declared that he had shot Trayvon in the chest in self-defense, they were barred from arresting him by the state’s now-famous Stand Your Ground law, the broadest protection of self-defense in the country. It immediately requires law enforcement officials to prove that a suspect did not act in self-defense, and sets the case on a slow track.

  2. 2.

    ShadeTail

    April 1, 2012 at 11:09 pm

    Any bets on how many comments it will be before one of the trolls demands to know why ABL is still posting here?

  3. 3.

    Anya

    April 1, 2012 at 11:14 pm

    @ShadeTail: more like stalkers.

  4. 4.

    Michele

    April 1, 2012 at 11:28 pm

    That’s awesome, ABL! I’ve just become acquainted with WeAct Radio so I’ll have to download it or wait for the rebroadcast. Exciting!

  5. 5.

    Michele

    April 1, 2012 at 11:35 pm

    @Michele: Duh, I mean Alternet Radio…

  6. 6.

    Brian S

    April 1, 2012 at 11:38 pm

    @Amir Khalid: One of the commenters at Coates’s place said the Sanford police are full of it, but not by much. Apparently, the law makes it so the police can be held liable if they arrest a person and it turns out the self-defense claim sticks, so police are loathe to arrest someone unless they’re sure they’ve got a solid case. And even then, it sometimes backfires, as in the other case in Florida where a guy chased down someone who’d stolen a radio from his car, stabbed him in the fight, denied it at first and then confessed. The fucking judge let the guy off based on stand your ground, even though he was clearly the aggressor at that point.

  7. 7.

    Anthony

    April 1, 2012 at 11:46 pm

    Here’s the section Sanford PD are hiding behind

    (2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.

    So I guess it depends on how liberal a definition you want to give to ‘probable cause’.

  8. 8.

    Warren Terra

    April 1, 2012 at 11:52 pm

    @Brian S:

    And even then, it sometimes backfires, as in the other case in Florida where a guy chased down someone who’d stolen a radio from his car, stabbed him in the fight, denied it at first and then confessed. The fucking judge let the guy off based on stand your ground, even though he was clearly the aggressor at that point.

    Apparently when the pursuer caught up to his quarry, his quarry “stood his ground” – swung a bag of stolen car radios at him. The court ruled this deadly assault by the quarry meant the pursuer had the legal right to stab him to death.

    @Anthony:

    Here’s the section Sanford PD are hiding behind

    Quoted there is seems a bit ambiguous, but certainly the way I’ve read about this section in the discussions since the Trayvon Martin death was publicized across the country matches what Brian S said above: that the police and especially the prosecutors are terrified they’ll be sued if they charge a killer who claims self-defense with a crime.

  9. 9.

    gwangung

    April 2, 2012 at 12:02 am

    @Warren Terra: Granted, it SEEMS like bullshit, but given the inexcusably bad way it was written, by NRA idiots who really don’t care outside of anyone outside of themselves, they are not wrong to think that way.

  10. 10.

    Martin

    April 2, 2012 at 12:05 am

    I DEMAND TO KNOW WHY abl IS STILL POSTING HERE!

  11. 11.

    Chris T.

    April 2, 2012 at 12:05 am

    The whole idea behind “stand your ground” is nuts. If you feel threatened, you can legally shoot anyone at any time. If I visit Florida and feel threatened because everyone there might (or might not) have a concealed weapon, everyone there should feel threatened because I might (or might not) have a concealed weapon, and therefore shoot them. Thus, they should all shoot me. Thus, I should shoot all of them.

    I guess that’s one way to handle the insanity that is Florida: arm everyone there and they’ll all shoot each other and then there are no humans left there and the rest of us can take it over (or let it revert to the wild, which might be better, given that it’s … Florida :-) ).

  12. 12.

    Brian S

    April 2, 2012 at 12:10 am

    @Warren Terra: Apparently when the pursuer caught up to his quarry, his quarry “stood his ground” – swung a bag of stolen car radios at him. The court ruled this deadly assault by the quarry meant the pursuer had the legal right to stab him to death.

    Which just shows how fricking ridiculous the law is. The pursuer instigated the contact. How the hell does he ever get to claim self-defense at that point? The judge basically said you have the right to hunt down and kill anyone who dares take your shit– all you have to do is claim they fought back when you tried to recover it. Are cops supposed to be irrelevant now? Will we turn them all into undertakers instead?

  13. 13.

    jheartney

    April 2, 2012 at 12:11 am

    @Chris T.: “Come visit Florida, where we play the Hunger Games every day!”

  14. 14.

    Bago

    April 2, 2012 at 12:12 am

    As an assassin, I felt that my paycheck was threatened by the target’s attempt to continue living.

  15. 15.

    Anthony

    April 2, 2012 at 12:17 am

    I feel like this is a law that was designed to be used selectively against ‘undesirables’, but it’s just so badly written that basically it’s out of control, and now they’re having it advertised on national television that murder is legal about half the time in their state.

  16. 16.

    gwangung

    April 2, 2012 at 12:29 am

    I feel like this is a law that was designed to be used selectively against ‘undesirables’, but it’s just so badly written that basically it’s out of control, and now they’re having it advertised on national television that murder is legal about half the time in their state.

    These people are so stupid that they don’t realize that using it selectively is a contradiction in terms. If it’s possible to go out of control and make it legal to murder half the time, that’s is EXACTLY what’s going to happen.

    Conservatives used to sneer about liberals getting tripped up all the time by the law of unintended consequences—they’re now doing their damnedest to impale themselves on that same law.

  17. 17.

    Brian S

    April 2, 2012 at 12:34 am

    @gwangung: It’s not a contradiction in terms if you control who gets investigated and charged, which is what at least some of the law enforcement types in Sanford had in mind. The cop who “corrected” witnesses should never be allowed near another investigation, but I doubt anything happens to him.

  18. 18.

    slag

    April 2, 2012 at 12:52 am

    @jheartney: Good point. Maybe Florida is actually trying to change its nickname. The Sunstroke State?

  19. 19.

    gwangung

    April 2, 2012 at 1:11 am

    @Brian S:

    It’s not a contradiction in terms if you control who gets investigated and charged, which is what at least some of the law enforcement types in Sanford had in mind.

    Well, that’s what they THINK they can do, but what happens it incentivizes sloppy work, and that sort of thing is easy to get out of control.

  20. 20.

    burnspbesq

    April 2, 2012 at 1:14 am

    the added bonus of being fully-estrogenated.

    Bonus? Say what now?

    I don’t judge pundits by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. I judge them by what they say/write.

    Why anyone with any pretense of objectivity or intellectual honesty would behave any other way is entirely beyond me.

    Perhaps you’d like to explain where I’ve gone astray.

  21. 21.

    slag

    April 2, 2012 at 1:17 am

    Perhaps you’d like to explain where I’ve gone astray.

    Where to start?

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    April 2, 2012 at 2:07 am

    @burnspbesq:
    I think ABL is hinting that women aren’t often enough invited to offer their point of view on a show like this. I can’t imagine her suggesting that women are inherently better than men, except maybe where personal experience of certain gender-specific issues is relevant.

  23. 23.

    Citizen_X

    April 2, 2012 at 2:55 am

    @slag:

    Where to start?

    Humor: lack thereof …

  24. 24.

    Bnut

    April 2, 2012 at 3:05 am

    Have my babies.

  25. 25.

    Yutsano

    April 2, 2012 at 3:48 am

    @Bnut: Heh.

    :: rubs hands together ::

  26. 26.

    brantl

    April 2, 2012 at 7:13 am

    @burnspbesq:You’re still breathing, and still, apparently,typing.

  27. 27.

    Lojasmo

    April 2, 2012 at 8:47 am

    @burnspbesq:

    y chromosome…gone astray

    Your persistent defense of child-fucking, for a start.

  28. 28.

    Unsympathetic

    April 2, 2012 at 11:54 am

    Enough interesting facts have recently been uncovered that have put me squarely in “neutral” in the rush to judgement.

    I WANT FACTS. Here’s most of my issues with the current story:

    1) Why did NBC doctor Z’s 911 call to sound racist when in fact the exchanges were:

    Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
    911 operator: “Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?”
    Zimmerman: “He looks black.”

    got translated to:
    Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, he looks black.”

    2) All convenience stores have closed-circuit camera. If M was “on his way back from the store,” let’s see the camera footage to verify the story.

    The following is the address from the police report –
    2381 Retreat View Cir
    Sanford, FL 32771

    This could be an issue because the nearest convenience store is not close. Note that the nearest highway is not accessible by foot, you have to walk around. And it was raining at the time.

    The story should be easy to verify. Has it been?

    3) Eight felony grand theft burglaries in the last 14 months in M’s enclave alone — M is justifiably worried about unknown people at night wandering around aimlessly. He’s dismissed as paranoid, but here’s the thing: You’re not paranoid if you’re correct.

    For those on this forum who claim that Sanford police are “racist” where’s the history of arresting and prosecuting the criminals who committed these 8 prior burglaries — most of which appear to be black?

    4) The shooting:

    IF at any point M mounted Z in a MMA-style “ground and pound” – that’s a perfectly justified shoot, case closed.

    It does not matter whether Z called the cops 47 times in the last year.
    It does not matter if Z is or not a racist.
    It does not matter if M is or is not a thug.
    It does not matter if the two of them had words.
    It does not matter who pursued who.
    It does not matter if M was confronted by Z.
    It does not even matter if they got into a fistfight over their words.

    If no, lock Z up.

    The video of Z at the police station proves nothing for or against – in the undoctored footage you can see the cop stop and look at the back of Z’s head.

    5) Eyewitness testimony that said Trayvon was on top – is this vetted?

    6) The 911 tape that has the recorded screams: You would have a hard time convincing me that Trayvon who is bigger, stronger, younger, in shape, AND knows how to use his fists is going to scream like the person on that tape, because Z is beating him.

    You hear screaming until the gun goes off. If only one of the two was screaming and only one of the two has injuries, well.

    T’s own father told investigators that the screaming was not his son.

    7) If you believe that Zimmerman wasn’t actually injured, remember that with that belief you’re also accusing both the EMT’s who treated Z at the scene and the police at the scene who took his statement as being accessories after the fact to manslaughter or worse.

  29. 29.

    Bubblegum Tate

    April 2, 2012 at 1:05 pm

    Not to pick on you or anything, ABL, but it’s pretty annoying that Travon Martin has now been reduced to a hashtag. He was a human being, not something to be reduced to the level of #whatijustate and #winningwednesday.

  30. 30.

    Someguy

    April 2, 2012 at 1:06 pm

    @burnspbesq:

    Perhaps you’d like to explain where I’ve gone astray

    You’re a white male, right?

  31. 31.

    Brachiator

    April 2, 2012 at 2:06 pm

    @Bubblegum Tate:

    He was a human being

    This is the real problem. Was. Not alive and getting on with his life.

    Not shit about hashtags.

  32. 32.

    Unsympathetic

    April 3, 2012 at 8:43 am

    ABL: You might be interested to learn that Zimmerman was the only community organizer in the area to support justice for Sherman Ware, a black homeless man who was beaten to death by the son of a Sanford police officer in 2010.

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