Well the verdict is out...What did you expect? This is Florida! - the Trayvon Martin case

It takes one a few days to digest the verdict from Sanford, Florida on George Zimmerman's trial.

As most in the world would know by now, hopefully they are not all only watching I Love Lucy, Friends and CSI from America with awe, George Zimmerman is a 28 year old Anglo Hispanic male who shot and killed a young unarmed black teenager, 17 year old Trayvon Martin, while he was walking back to his house in a gated community on February 26, 2012.

George Zimmerman was only briefly interviewed after the murder and was released because the police, who conduct their investigation in closed environments, bought, believed and even aided Zimmerman's "self defense" argument. This outraged Trayvon Martin's family, the Sanford community and many people in the US, with an iota of intelligence, shame and a sense of justice, to protest loudly, and demand the arrest of George Zimmerman and call for a full open trial. George Zimmerman was arrested 44 days after he killed Trayvon Martin with plenty of time to lose evidence, distort evidence and contaminate evidence. Do you know any other country, even Third World countries, where this would happen?

Not only was there a delay in arresting George Zimmerman (more than a month) after the murder, but there was a huge crowd, driven by open racism and hidden prejudice, and some powerful organizations, driven by their support for guns for self defense and the stand your ground law, that provided more than a million dollars for George Zimmerman's trial.

George Zimmerman's trial was led by savvy lawyers who knew the Florida criminal law and its various interpretations;  the culture of the judge, the psychology of the jury and the conservative political views of the Florida public. They also knew the Prosecutors' challenges, shoddiness and sloppiness.  Like in any elite classist, racist, and/or  sexist system...the rich guy, the white guy, the popular guy and the well connected or funded guy got the best lawyers...the poor young Black dead victim and his family got a bunch of shoddy Prosecutors who appeared to be aiding the defense instead of helping their client.

In the US if you are White you are innocent until proven guilty...if you are colored you are guilty until proven innocent. If you are White you can shoot and kill to stand your ground (a law in 27 States), but if you are Black or colored you will be shot until you hit the ground.

This Stand your Ground law, introduced in Florida just a few years before I moved there, allows people,  based on any mere assumptions, fear, judgments and suppositions to shoot and kill people...without retreating (standing your ground) either to save your life, avoid bodily harm or to immobilize the other from any "possibility" of advance. 

This law gives people with guns huge latitude to kill, for very flimsy reasons, and then use the "self defense" argument to successfully avoid conviction. The number of murders that have occurred in the defense of "Stand Your Ground" argument is huge.

A young political party worker for the Democratic party was shot and injured when he approached a home to give fliers for his candidate in the South. The shooter was not charged or convicted. The police felt that he had stood his ground over what he thought was a burglar approaching his door.

A mentally challenged young man walking in front of a car holding a dog leash was shot and killed by the driver of the car...because the driver mistook the leash for some weapon. No charge was filed against the shooter and the killer.

A young Asian student, wearing a Halloween costume, was shot and killed one night during a neighborhood trick or treat event by a resident with the gun who did not want him on his lawn. The killer got away with the "right to defend property against trespassing" and "possible threat to self" argument.

Two men who were entering through their house window because they had locked themselves out were shot by an overzealous neighbor who thought they were robbers. The hyper-vigilant neighbor did not even know how his neighbors looked but, in strange twist of fate, shot and killed the very neighbors whose property he thought he was defending. The shooter was not charged and of murder.

Not only in America do we have people too private and insular to know their own neighbors, but these very individuals would not also hesitate to aim their guns at their neighbors in an overzealous attempt to defend the others’ properties. And the system might just protect these killers.

In the 1960s and 1970s police and vigilante groups could openly kill Blacks, especially Black protestors, and other colored people and not have their actions and motives questioned.  

Today you can pretty much do the same thing...as long as it is in the dark, with no or few witnesses, and it is in a predominantly white community, where fear, prejudice and hatred (towards Blacks, colored people and others) runs high.

If laws don't exist in some countries (and they are referred to as lawless lands or anarchy), in the US elaborate laws, interpretation of laws and application of laws are used to protect White privilege and power, and make discrimination, disenfranchisement and murder of Black and Brown people legal.

The Black community, whose cultures, families and self esteem were destroyed by slavery and racism, could not even rely on the law enforcement and the judicial system to hear their plight and defend them against obvious and extreme injustice. And people in other community have felt the same way.

This is what happens when sick systems are not confronted and held accountable. People in these systems fear many things unnecessarily, and people outside begin to withdraw in large numbers. Ask many Blacks from the South, living in many cities in the North, if they'd return to Florida or other parts of the South, they’d roll their eyes and give an emphatic “no” because “you don't know who is going to stalk you, harass you and kill you...and the system is going to protect and acquit the killer."

Immigrants, usually awed by their homes, cars, computers and cell phones in the US, and America's highways and skyscrapers, well sold through enticing colorful propaganda...never listen when experiences of those of us who have lived there for many years and are social scientists who observe and study the system at close quarters. They had drunk the Kool-Aid and now want those that pay a different picture from the Hollywood movies they are used to seeing back home  to be either silent, compliant or congenially cooperative to their narrow priorities.

As protestors in support of Trayvon Martin would note, "We had a verdict...not justice!"

For the family of Martin,  no amount of money will compensate for the loss of their son. Nothing would have woken that boy up from the cold concrete on which he laid, on that rainy evening in February when he was returning, like so many young teens in the US, from a convenience after buying some skittles (a bag of American candies), back home! He never made it to his home, because a grown man, with too many assumptions, fears, paranoia and prejudice, and enough aggression and cold determination followed him, stalked him, pursued him, provoked him, and then pulled a trigger on him. Trayvon, a boy of 17, bled to death, while his shooter and killer went free.

The world, far too long awed by the USA, must know about this case. They must know that there is a difference between facts and the law; between law and the judicial system ; between the judicial system and delivery of justice; and between justice and the truth.