In April of 1989, Tom Petty released a song titled “I Won’t
Back Down”, which contained the phrase “I’ll stand my ground”.
Tom Petty produced a lot of great music, and this song was one
of his best.
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - I Won't Back Down
(Official Music Video) - YouTube
It goes without saying that you always have a right to defend
yourself and your property, but the right has evolved into something more
sinister in recent years.
Prior to the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, most of us were
not aware that many states had “stand your ground” laws. Since Florida is one
of those states, George Zimmerman was acquitted of all the charges against him.
Ironically, Zimmerman himself was the target of a shooting three years later. The
perpetrator was CONVICTED of attempted murder, and sentenced to 20 years in
prison.
Since his acquittal, Zimmerman’s life has not been a bed of
roses.
He has been charged twice for domestic violence, his Twitter
account has been suspended for various violations, he sold the murder weapon for
$250,000 (but not without a lot of controversy), he gained more than 100 pounds
between the date of the shooting and the start of the trial, and he is
currently trying to sue Pete Buttigieg Elizabeth Warren for defamation. On
November 5 of this year, Zimmerman was scheduled to speak at the Lethal Force Gun Laws 2021 Tactics
& Strategies Conference in Idaho. When the organizers learned that
Zimmerman was going to be a speaker, the event was cancelled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Zimmerman
As of June, 2020, 25 states have passed “stand your ground” laws.
Georgia is one of those states, but Illinois and Wisconsin are not, but that
does not mean that “defending yourself” in those states could not be used as a
defense.
https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-law-basics/states-that-have-stand-your-ground-laws.html
After an unarmed black man named Jacob Blake was
shot in the back 7 times by Kenosha police, riots erupted in the city. Kyle
Zimmerman’s father lives in Kenosha, and when Kyle heard of the riots, he and
his mother drove from their home in Illinois to Kenosha “to defend the property”
of a business owner that he knew. Even though he was too young to own the AR-15
that he used to shoot three people, a jury in Kenosha acquitted him, largely
due to the incompetence of the judge. His defense was that he was defending himself.
Overnight, he became a celebrity on right wing media, and he
actually got invited to Mar-A-Lago by Donald Trump.
A case in Georgia turned out differently.
In February of 2021, an unarmed black man, Ahmaud
Marquez Arbery was shot and killed on February 23 while jogging through a
predominately white neighborhood about two miles from his mother’s house.
William Bryan, a neighbor of the man who shot Arbery, took a video of the
shooting, which was later released to a local radio station.
Heather Cox Richardson’s letter of November 26 provides a lot
more details about the case, but here are the key points.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-26-2021
1)
The local police department, as well as the local
prosecutor, were not interested in pursuing the case.
2)
The men involved in the shooting used “self-defense”
as an excuse for the shooting, the same excuse used by Kyle Rittenhouse.
3)
Just as a video was key to convicting Derek Chavin
after he killed George Floyd, the video was the main reason the men involved
were convicted.
4)
The case finally went to trial due to the persistence
of a local reporter named Larry Hobbs, who issued numerous columns about the killing,
which forced the case to trial.
On Wednesday, November 24, just
before the Thanksgiving holiday, a jury found Gregory McMichael (65), his son
Travis McMichael (35), and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan (52) guilty on
23 counts in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23, 2020, near Brunswick,
in Glynn County, Georgia.
In addition, former prosecutor Jackie Johnson was indicted her for violating her oath of office and obstructing police, saying she used her position to discourage law enforcement officers from arresting the McMichaels.
Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the National Anthem to
protest the shooting of unarmed black people by the police. More
details about him can be found in the link below:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-man-of-integrity.html
Kaepernick was roundly criticized by many right wind pundits,
and even Donald Trump himself. He’s been unable to return to football, but he
is doing fine financially, in large part due to a Nike ad that ran in 2018.
The conservatives in this country don’t like him because he
dared to expose the dirty side of our history. As a result, at least 21 states
have passed laws banning the teaching of critical race theory. The CRT controversy
was the primary reason that Glenn Youngkin just got elected as governor in
Virginia.
FOX “news”, of course, did its part, since the topic has been
mentioned over 2,000 times since the beginning of the year, even though Tucker
Carlson has admitted that he still hasn’t
figured out what critical racial theory is.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tucker-carlson-says-never-figured-203411585.html
Critical race theory is an academic
movement focused on recognizing the effects slavery and institutional racism
continue to have on the U.S. Critical race
theory is an intellectual framework for analyzing American history introduced
by legal scholars as a way to recognize the effects that racism has had on the
U.S. The theory dates back to the 1970s, although it was apparently coined
during a 1989 conference led by several scholars and has roots even farther
back, with civil rights activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois. A book titled Critical
Race Theory: An Introduction defines the movement as “a collection of
activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship
among race, racism, and power.” Critical race theory has been applied to
examine how the history of racism in the U.S. has affected multiple areas of
society, such as discriminatory labor practices, access to education, bank
lending, and housing segregation, as well as a host of microaggressions. One of
the founders of critical race theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw, described it as “an
approach to grappling with a history of White supremacy that rejects the belief
that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow
from that past are detached from it.” [Time, 9/29/20;
CNN, 10/1/20]
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-critical-race-theory-obsession
On June 19, 1845, Texas was the first state in which former slaves
learned that they had been freed. As a result, it’s not surprising that Texas
is one of the first states to ban the mention of the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow
laws in its public schools.
The history of our country, although
admirable in many ways, is littered with examples of events that should not
have happened. For that reason, I believe that history should be taught in our
schools.
All of it.
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