TrotskistMarx
30th April 2012, 01:37
Dear friends, what a sick, psychopath and literally crazy society the United States of Fascism is.
http://www.bet.com/content/betcom/news/national/2012/04/03/king-s-assassination-and-the-trayvon-connection/_jcr_content/featuredMedia/newsitemimage.newsimage.dimg/040312-national-martin-luther-king-jr-trayvon-martin.jpg
There are tons and tons of ultra-right wingers, libertarians, Republican Party voters, Tea Party supporters and many people with a sort of John Wayne thinking, that are sort of legitimizing, rationalizing, the cold blooded death of Trayvon Martin. And twisting reality by claiming that this was "self defense" and not a murder. These are the same kinds of people that after 9-11 wrote in many bloggers and websites statements like this: "Let's kill all Iraqui rag-heads and bomb that country to stone ages". These are NASCAR ultra-right wing dads who are into fascistic sports like football and all that. Here is a couple of comments about Trayvon Martin's death:
“You think if I shot some white kid walking down my street they’d say I was just standing my ground? I’d be in jail, we all know that. Actually, I’d probably be dead. But it seem like more of this is coming to light than they want. Zimmerman had a big ass gun. A gun meant to kill people. They got a whole system set up to protect this kind of shit. But a lot of shit has come out into the open they don’t intend to be out in the open. And people don’t like it.”
—A veteran in his 60s who has lived in Florida his whole life
“It could have been anybody. A lot of kids walk from stores. I think this is very much a stereotype. Like he [Zimmerman] said on the tape, ‘oh yeah, this guy’s definitely up to no good.’ How? Why? What made you say that? Nothing, all right! This shit happen all the time. Yeah, all the time in the neighborhood, when the police just stop us. They slam us for no reason and shit. Say we got weed and shit. That shit’s fucked up. How they going slam us for? They some sorry fucks.”
—A youth from Miami
“This [the murder of Trayvon and the police coverup] could be like what they were doing to people in Germany, for all we know.”
—A young man taking a course in world history in high school
and had studied Nazi persecution of Jews
“Young people like Trayvon can’t keep getting killed for no reason. I’m ready to look at anything to try to figure this out and come up with some answers.”
—A young woman from Florida A&M who organized
and participated in protests on her campus
“Yeah, I did the walkout. I led the walkout. I had my big poster. What did it feel like? It felt like a sense of clarity. But at the same time I wasn’t getting no sense of justice. We went on a long ass walk. And it’s gonna happen again. Cuz I’m fixing to walk until my feet bleed.”
—A youth from Miami
The murder of Trayvon Martin stings. It is an outrage on top of countless outrages. And it is right, and inspiring, that in Sanford, Florida—and all over—people are determined that this is not gonna go down. This time some of the anger of those for whom this system has no future, and the reality behind that anger, are cutting through the whitewash, the coverup, the lies. This time people are breaking through the fear that the murder of so many Black youth by police (or wannabe police) is supposed to instill and enforce. The hoodie has become a badge of honor.
How is it that in this day and age, the murder of Trayvon Martin is not an isolated incident but yet another in a long line of killing Black people, especially youth? It is because these crimes are encouraged, carried out, and justified by a system. But this time, many people are saying we cannot let this go on any more—not just this one incident, terrible as it is, but the whole damn thing. And that is so important, and so inspiring.
At the same time—this is a moment to seize—a moment to build a movement to really and finally put an end to all the horrors that come from this system.
Listen to the voices on this page. Think about the reality. If the powers-that-be can get away with this, what won’t they get away with? The days of half-stepping and tired played-out illusions that someone somewhere in the power structure is going to change anything real—those days need to be gone.
Make APRIL 10 a DAY OF OUTRAGE! Seize the time, wherever and whenever there is a chance, to act with daring and creativity. And have all that feed into a movement that will not stop until the whole system that is responsible for the deaths of so many, here and around the world, is no more.
Within that, the revolution must be out there, connecting with people’s outrage and helping people find ways to make a powerful political statement that this is not gonna go down. Get out to the neighborhoods where people are seething with anger… locked down in the housing projects, ghettos and barrios. Play Bob Avakian’s talk, Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About and his spoken word piece, “All Played Out.” Get bundles of Revolution newspaper into the hands of everyone who really wants change. And help the people find creative ways to make a political statement so powerful that nobody can ignore it.
Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution
SOURCE: http://rwor.org/a/265/day-of-outrage-april-10-en.html
The Killing Lies About the Murder of Trayvon Martin
by Li Onesto
At the beginning it was like a murder scene where cops, authorities, and media mouthpieces didn’t have their story quite together yet. Perhaps they thought things would go like so many times before. Just another Black kid dead, just another family devastated, with no one able to do anything. But this time something struck a nerve already raw with the regularity of Black teenage funerals. This time the truth was there for people to see more clearly.
Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, walking home with Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea, gunned down by a wannabe-cop. To George Zimmerman Black youth in hoodies look “suspicious.”
This vicious vigilante murder of an innocent Black youth and the blatant “pat on the back” by the police ignited an outpouring of outrage from coast to coast.
The response to all this, within the powers-that-be, has been contentious. Some politicians and mainstream media figures have donned hoodies and spoken out against racial profiling.
But at the same time there has been a concerted effort to spin a whole narrative against Trayvon Martin, hoping to put a lid on people’s anger—or at least make them question what compelled them into the streets to say, “We are all Trayvon Martin!”
Certain ruling class forces are spreading lies through the media aimed at changing people’s minds about what they correctly saw in the FACTS of what happened the night of February 26. They want to reverse right and wrong, and say that the victim was actually George Zimmerman and the aggressor was Trayvon Martin.
They want to repolarize things, where even if people don’t buy their whole rewriting of what happened, they hope that giving Zimmerman’s story such publicity and authority will put enough “questions” out there to make some people step back a bit. That even if this doesn’t get over completely among the masses of Black people, it will affect broader sections of the population who have been outraged at this murder.
For decades people have been fed a steady diet of the system’s demonization of Black and Latino youth; that these “thugs and hoodlums” are to blame for being unemployed, uneducated, incarcerated, and killed by the police. But then something like the murder of Trayvon Martin comes along and many who have been buying this whole reversal of reality get challenged and jolted. This murder put something that happens every day in communities across this country into the national spotlight. And people stepped forward to stand with the masses and protest what is exactly the kind of thing that happens as a result of the demonization of Black youth.
Poisonous “Evidence” in the Court of Public Opinion
In the court of public opinion this counterattack presents certain “evidence” to demonize and defame Trayvon Martin. It doesn’t say it straight out. But in effect the message is that Trayvon Martin was no “innocent lamb,” and that perhaps he deserved what he got... just like so many other Black youth gunned down and locked up in this society.
So we got to unpack and demolish these LIES.
Lie #1: George Zimmerman is really the victim
There is a lot we don’t know about what happened that night. But some things we do know. We know Zimmerman called 911 and said he had spotted “a real suspicious guy” who “looks like he’s up to no good.” The dispatcher asks: “Are you following him?” Zimmerman says: “Yeah.” The dispatcher says: “OK, we don’t need you to do that.”
But then what happens? Zimmerman ignores the dispatcher’s instructions. And while we don’t know exactly what happened next—and Trayvon Martin will never get to give his account—we do know there was a confrontation, some yelling, and then Trayvon’s life was over.
George Zimmerman’s brother, Robert Zimmerman, was given a big platform on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, shown nationally and replayed several times, painting Trayvon as a thug who would have killed George or put him in “diapers for the rest of his life” if he hadn’t been stopped with a bullet through his chest. We are told George was “fighting for his life.”
But the fact is—none of this would have happened if Zimmerman had done what the 911 dispatcher told him to do.
Zimmerman’s family claims Trayvon punched him and that he was “fighting for his life.” Eyewitness accounts and other FACTS that have come out in the case contradict this:
Mary Cutcher told Dateline NBC that she and her roommate saw Zimmerman “straddling the body, basically a foot on both sides of Trayvon’s body, and his hands pressed on his back.”
Richard Kurtz, the mortician who prepared Trayvon Martin’s body for burial, told CBS News that he saw no signs of a fight. He said: “We could see no physical signs like there had been a scuffle... The hands—I didn’t see any knuckles, bruises or what have you. And that is something we would have covered up if it would have been there.”
Lie #2: Trayvon Martin was not so “innocent”—he really was “suspicious” and “dangerous”
At the scene of the crime, the police treated Trayvon Martin like a criminal as he lay dead. They did a background check on him but not on Zimmerman. They did a test for drugs and alcohol on Trayvon’s dead body, but not on Zimmerman.
Then, after millions of people around the country did NOT see Trayvon Martin as a criminal, but as an innocent victim, a barrage of headlines hit the news about how Trayvon Martin was suspended from school three times. And we are told:
“...a more complicated portrait began to emerge of a teenager whose problems at school ranged from getting spotted defacing lockers to getting caught with a marijuana baggie and women’s jewelry.” (Miami Herald, March 26, 2012)
We are supposed to do an about-face. Hey, you thought Trayvon Martin was unjustly murdered, innocent, didn’t deserve to die—that it was right for thousands of people to go out in the street to demand justice? Well think again...
He was suspended from school.
He had a bag in his backpack with marijuana residue.
He had a “burglary tool” (a screwdriver).
He wrote graffiti (“WTF”) on a locker.
He had a bunch of jewelry.
He skipped school and was late for class.
Can anyone seriously say this is evidence of a “troubled teen” with a “history of trouble with authorities”? By these standards the vast majority of youth, of all nationalities, are suspicious and criminal. These things make you a criminal? Let alone show that on the night of February 26, Trayvon Martin was “probably up to no good”—and deserved to die!!??? On one level, this is ridiculous. But this is the kind of vicious public opinion being created to get over with a verdict of justifiable homicide.
And look how these suspensions came about: According to the Miami Herald, a school police investigator said he saw Trayvon on the school surveillance camera “hiding and being suspicious.” He said he saw Trayvon mark up a door with “WTF.” The next day the officer searched Trayvon’s book bag to look for the marker and reportedly found some jewelry and a screwdriver he described as a “burglary tool.”
Isn’t this another example of how Black youth are treated like criminals—dogged for looking like you’re “hiding and being suspicious,” having your bag searched for something like a marker, suspended for residue of marijuana. (And to set the record straight, Trayvon Martin does not have a juvenile offender record.)
As Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, said: “They killed my son and now they’re trying to kill his reputation.” And for many people, especially the youth, this is just one more unacceptable slap in the face that has only fueled their anger and determination to get justice for Trayvon.
In the face of widespread discontent and protest, especially when there’s the potential for many to question the very legitimacy of this system, the powers-that-be will lash back in many different ways. Through vicious force and brutality. And also ideologically, trying to cool things out with lies and promises, and efforts to channel people’s anger into faith in the system to “correct itself.” But the truth of the matter is this system will NEVER and can NEVER be anything other than what it is: A worldwide capitalist-imperialist system of exploitation and oppression—a system in which white supremacy and the oppression of Black has been part of its foundations from the very beginning.
SOURCE: http://rwor.org/a/265/killing-lies-about-murder-of-trayvon-martin-en.html
.
http://www.bet.com/content/betcom/news/national/2012/04/03/king-s-assassination-and-the-trayvon-connection/_jcr_content/featuredMedia/newsitemimage.newsimage.dimg/040312-national-martin-luther-king-jr-trayvon-martin.jpg
There are tons and tons of ultra-right wingers, libertarians, Republican Party voters, Tea Party supporters and many people with a sort of John Wayne thinking, that are sort of legitimizing, rationalizing, the cold blooded death of Trayvon Martin. And twisting reality by claiming that this was "self defense" and not a murder. These are the same kinds of people that after 9-11 wrote in many bloggers and websites statements like this: "Let's kill all Iraqui rag-heads and bomb that country to stone ages". These are NASCAR ultra-right wing dads who are into fascistic sports like football and all that. Here is a couple of comments about Trayvon Martin's death:
“You think if I shot some white kid walking down my street they’d say I was just standing my ground? I’d be in jail, we all know that. Actually, I’d probably be dead. But it seem like more of this is coming to light than they want. Zimmerman had a big ass gun. A gun meant to kill people. They got a whole system set up to protect this kind of shit. But a lot of shit has come out into the open they don’t intend to be out in the open. And people don’t like it.”
—A veteran in his 60s who has lived in Florida his whole life
“It could have been anybody. A lot of kids walk from stores. I think this is very much a stereotype. Like he [Zimmerman] said on the tape, ‘oh yeah, this guy’s definitely up to no good.’ How? Why? What made you say that? Nothing, all right! This shit happen all the time. Yeah, all the time in the neighborhood, when the police just stop us. They slam us for no reason and shit. Say we got weed and shit. That shit’s fucked up. How they going slam us for? They some sorry fucks.”
—A youth from Miami
“This [the murder of Trayvon and the police coverup] could be like what they were doing to people in Germany, for all we know.”
—A young man taking a course in world history in high school
and had studied Nazi persecution of Jews
“Young people like Trayvon can’t keep getting killed for no reason. I’m ready to look at anything to try to figure this out and come up with some answers.”
—A young woman from Florida A&M who organized
and participated in protests on her campus
“Yeah, I did the walkout. I led the walkout. I had my big poster. What did it feel like? It felt like a sense of clarity. But at the same time I wasn’t getting no sense of justice. We went on a long ass walk. And it’s gonna happen again. Cuz I’m fixing to walk until my feet bleed.”
—A youth from Miami
The murder of Trayvon Martin stings. It is an outrage on top of countless outrages. And it is right, and inspiring, that in Sanford, Florida—and all over—people are determined that this is not gonna go down. This time some of the anger of those for whom this system has no future, and the reality behind that anger, are cutting through the whitewash, the coverup, the lies. This time people are breaking through the fear that the murder of so many Black youth by police (or wannabe police) is supposed to instill and enforce. The hoodie has become a badge of honor.
How is it that in this day and age, the murder of Trayvon Martin is not an isolated incident but yet another in a long line of killing Black people, especially youth? It is because these crimes are encouraged, carried out, and justified by a system. But this time, many people are saying we cannot let this go on any more—not just this one incident, terrible as it is, but the whole damn thing. And that is so important, and so inspiring.
At the same time—this is a moment to seize—a moment to build a movement to really and finally put an end to all the horrors that come from this system.
Listen to the voices on this page. Think about the reality. If the powers-that-be can get away with this, what won’t they get away with? The days of half-stepping and tired played-out illusions that someone somewhere in the power structure is going to change anything real—those days need to be gone.
Make APRIL 10 a DAY OF OUTRAGE! Seize the time, wherever and whenever there is a chance, to act with daring and creativity. And have all that feed into a movement that will not stop until the whole system that is responsible for the deaths of so many, here and around the world, is no more.
Within that, the revolution must be out there, connecting with people’s outrage and helping people find ways to make a powerful political statement that this is not gonna go down. Get out to the neighborhoods where people are seething with anger… locked down in the housing projects, ghettos and barrios. Play Bob Avakian’s talk, Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About and his spoken word piece, “All Played Out.” Get bundles of Revolution newspaper into the hands of everyone who really wants change. And help the people find creative ways to make a political statement so powerful that nobody can ignore it.
Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution
SOURCE: http://rwor.org/a/265/day-of-outrage-april-10-en.html
The Killing Lies About the Murder of Trayvon Martin
by Li Onesto
At the beginning it was like a murder scene where cops, authorities, and media mouthpieces didn’t have their story quite together yet. Perhaps they thought things would go like so many times before. Just another Black kid dead, just another family devastated, with no one able to do anything. But this time something struck a nerve already raw with the regularity of Black teenage funerals. This time the truth was there for people to see more clearly.
Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, walking home with Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea, gunned down by a wannabe-cop. To George Zimmerman Black youth in hoodies look “suspicious.”
This vicious vigilante murder of an innocent Black youth and the blatant “pat on the back” by the police ignited an outpouring of outrage from coast to coast.
The response to all this, within the powers-that-be, has been contentious. Some politicians and mainstream media figures have donned hoodies and spoken out against racial profiling.
But at the same time there has been a concerted effort to spin a whole narrative against Trayvon Martin, hoping to put a lid on people’s anger—or at least make them question what compelled them into the streets to say, “We are all Trayvon Martin!”
Certain ruling class forces are spreading lies through the media aimed at changing people’s minds about what they correctly saw in the FACTS of what happened the night of February 26. They want to reverse right and wrong, and say that the victim was actually George Zimmerman and the aggressor was Trayvon Martin.
They want to repolarize things, where even if people don’t buy their whole rewriting of what happened, they hope that giving Zimmerman’s story such publicity and authority will put enough “questions” out there to make some people step back a bit. That even if this doesn’t get over completely among the masses of Black people, it will affect broader sections of the population who have been outraged at this murder.
For decades people have been fed a steady diet of the system’s demonization of Black and Latino youth; that these “thugs and hoodlums” are to blame for being unemployed, uneducated, incarcerated, and killed by the police. But then something like the murder of Trayvon Martin comes along and many who have been buying this whole reversal of reality get challenged and jolted. This murder put something that happens every day in communities across this country into the national spotlight. And people stepped forward to stand with the masses and protest what is exactly the kind of thing that happens as a result of the demonization of Black youth.
Poisonous “Evidence” in the Court of Public Opinion
In the court of public opinion this counterattack presents certain “evidence” to demonize and defame Trayvon Martin. It doesn’t say it straight out. But in effect the message is that Trayvon Martin was no “innocent lamb,” and that perhaps he deserved what he got... just like so many other Black youth gunned down and locked up in this society.
So we got to unpack and demolish these LIES.
Lie #1: George Zimmerman is really the victim
There is a lot we don’t know about what happened that night. But some things we do know. We know Zimmerman called 911 and said he had spotted “a real suspicious guy” who “looks like he’s up to no good.” The dispatcher asks: “Are you following him?” Zimmerman says: “Yeah.” The dispatcher says: “OK, we don’t need you to do that.”
But then what happens? Zimmerman ignores the dispatcher’s instructions. And while we don’t know exactly what happened next—and Trayvon Martin will never get to give his account—we do know there was a confrontation, some yelling, and then Trayvon’s life was over.
George Zimmerman’s brother, Robert Zimmerman, was given a big platform on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, shown nationally and replayed several times, painting Trayvon as a thug who would have killed George or put him in “diapers for the rest of his life” if he hadn’t been stopped with a bullet through his chest. We are told George was “fighting for his life.”
But the fact is—none of this would have happened if Zimmerman had done what the 911 dispatcher told him to do.
Zimmerman’s family claims Trayvon punched him and that he was “fighting for his life.” Eyewitness accounts and other FACTS that have come out in the case contradict this:
Mary Cutcher told Dateline NBC that she and her roommate saw Zimmerman “straddling the body, basically a foot on both sides of Trayvon’s body, and his hands pressed on his back.”
Richard Kurtz, the mortician who prepared Trayvon Martin’s body for burial, told CBS News that he saw no signs of a fight. He said: “We could see no physical signs like there had been a scuffle... The hands—I didn’t see any knuckles, bruises or what have you. And that is something we would have covered up if it would have been there.”
Lie #2: Trayvon Martin was not so “innocent”—he really was “suspicious” and “dangerous”
At the scene of the crime, the police treated Trayvon Martin like a criminal as he lay dead. They did a background check on him but not on Zimmerman. They did a test for drugs and alcohol on Trayvon’s dead body, but not on Zimmerman.
Then, after millions of people around the country did NOT see Trayvon Martin as a criminal, but as an innocent victim, a barrage of headlines hit the news about how Trayvon Martin was suspended from school three times. And we are told:
“...a more complicated portrait began to emerge of a teenager whose problems at school ranged from getting spotted defacing lockers to getting caught with a marijuana baggie and women’s jewelry.” (Miami Herald, March 26, 2012)
We are supposed to do an about-face. Hey, you thought Trayvon Martin was unjustly murdered, innocent, didn’t deserve to die—that it was right for thousands of people to go out in the street to demand justice? Well think again...
He was suspended from school.
He had a bag in his backpack with marijuana residue.
He had a “burglary tool” (a screwdriver).
He wrote graffiti (“WTF”) on a locker.
He had a bunch of jewelry.
He skipped school and was late for class.
Can anyone seriously say this is evidence of a “troubled teen” with a “history of trouble with authorities”? By these standards the vast majority of youth, of all nationalities, are suspicious and criminal. These things make you a criminal? Let alone show that on the night of February 26, Trayvon Martin was “probably up to no good”—and deserved to die!!??? On one level, this is ridiculous. But this is the kind of vicious public opinion being created to get over with a verdict of justifiable homicide.
And look how these suspensions came about: According to the Miami Herald, a school police investigator said he saw Trayvon on the school surveillance camera “hiding and being suspicious.” He said he saw Trayvon mark up a door with “WTF.” The next day the officer searched Trayvon’s book bag to look for the marker and reportedly found some jewelry and a screwdriver he described as a “burglary tool.”
Isn’t this another example of how Black youth are treated like criminals—dogged for looking like you’re “hiding and being suspicious,” having your bag searched for something like a marker, suspended for residue of marijuana. (And to set the record straight, Trayvon Martin does not have a juvenile offender record.)
As Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, said: “They killed my son and now they’re trying to kill his reputation.” And for many people, especially the youth, this is just one more unacceptable slap in the face that has only fueled their anger and determination to get justice for Trayvon.
In the face of widespread discontent and protest, especially when there’s the potential for many to question the very legitimacy of this system, the powers-that-be will lash back in many different ways. Through vicious force and brutality. And also ideologically, trying to cool things out with lies and promises, and efforts to channel people’s anger into faith in the system to “correct itself.” But the truth of the matter is this system will NEVER and can NEVER be anything other than what it is: A worldwide capitalist-imperialist system of exploitation and oppression—a system in which white supremacy and the oppression of Black has been part of its foundations from the very beginning.
SOURCE: http://rwor.org/a/265/killing-lies-about-murder-of-trayvon-martin-en.html
.