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"The department will conduct a thorough and independent review of all of the evidence and take appropriate action at the conclusion of the investigation. The department also is providing assistance to and cooperating with the state officials in their investigation into the incident. With all federal civil rights crimes, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person acted intentionally and with the specific intent to do something which the law forbids – the highest level of intent in criminal law.This action carries more weight than any speech. This is great news. However, we should not let this news placate us and make us complacent. We must remain focused and vigilant until Trayvon Martin and his family get justice. Keep protesting, keep petitioning, keep blogging!
“Negligence, recklessness, mistakes and accidents are not prosecutable under the federal criminal civil rights laws.”
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"The February 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin has shaken Sanford, a small city near Orlando, Fla. The 17-year-old was shot by George Zimmerman, the white neighborhood watch captain of a local gated community. His only crime was walking from a 7-Eleven to a nearby home in the pouring rain.According to CNN, the case is now in the hands of the State's Attorney. Yet, while Trayvon Martin's family continues to grieve over the loss of their dear son, George Zimmerman remains free as a bird. That's a damn shame!
Martin's parents and black community members are outraged at the way Sanford Police have handled the investigation. There have been no charges in the neighborhood watch shooting, and there are accusations of police misconduct and witness contamination.
Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee claims he does not have probable cause to arrest Zimmerman, but that may not actually be true. Just before the shooting, the neighborhood watch leader called 911 to report a suspicious person, explains the Orlando Sentinel. Sources tell ABC that he was ordered to wait for officers to arrive.
Instead of listening, Zimmerman got out of his car and went after the teen on foot, chasing him between two rows of townhouses. A fist fight broke out, and a 13-year-old boy told the news outlet that he saw them on the ground but separated. Even though he outweighed Trayvon Martin by more than 100 pounds, Zimmerman claims he then shot the unarmed teen in self-defense."
CNN provides additional details:
"When you add it up, it just doesn't even make sense," said Ben Crump, the Martin family's attorney. "Trayvon Martin, a kid, has a bag of Skittles. (Zimmerman) had a 9 mm gun. Trayvon Martin didn't approach George Zimmerman, George Zimmerman approached Trayvon Martin. So how can he now assert self defense?"
"is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the desired result in audience attitudes. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare."Through Twitter, Facebook and mainstream media, the Kony video has been repeatedly dispersed worldwide. When one's cuts through all of the sensationalism and emotionalism of the video, the purpose is clear. Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign seeks to persuade the American public to promote its goal. Its ultimate goal is to support, sustain and possibly expand US military intervention in Central Africa. It urges the public to pressure Congress to support the Ugandan military. Obviously, such an objective is pro-militarism. Western troops occupying African land is imperialism.
But Visible Children pointed out that although Invisible Children had spent more than $8.6 million last year, "only 32 percent went to direct services with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production."Like most propaganda, the video omits and/or glosses four key facts. Such glaring omissions make me question Invisible Children's true motives. First, although it calls on us to support the Ugandan military, it fails to mention the human rights violations and atrocities committed by the Ugandan government.
Russell defended the group's spending, saying that Invisible Children needed to spend money on advocacy and awareness of young people, especially in the West.
[C]ritics here said the video glosses over a complicated history that made it possible for Kony to rise to the notoriety he has today. They also lamented that the video does not inform viewers that Kony originally was waging war against Uganda’s army, whose human rights record has been condemned as brutal by independent observers.Second, it fails to mention that the United States intervened in Uganda in 2008. That year, United States Africa Command launched the failed Operation Lighting Thunder. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the Operation failed to protect civilians. More specifically, a Council of Foreign Affairs article titled Obama Takes on the LRA notes that:
"Operation Lighting Thunder, and other such missions to fight the LRA in the Central African Republic and in southern Sudan, served mostly to kill efforts to keep beleaguered peace talks going. And, far from neutralizing the LRA, they prompted a strategically effective and ferocious response. In January and February 2009, the LRA abducted around 700 people, including an estimated 500 children, and killed almost 1,000."In light of that history, it is clear that increased military operations in Central Africa may only exacerbate the problem by increasing the number of civilian causalities. Although we all want to do something to improve the situation, US military intervention is not necessarily the best course of action.
In a 2003 decision (Grutter v. Bollinger) that the majority said it expected would last for 25 years, the Supreme Court allowed public colleges and universities to take account of race in admission decisions...[T]he court signaled that it might end such affirmative action much sooner than that.The University of Texas clearly satisfied the requirements of Grutter by implementing a multi-factor admission policy. The top ten percent of all Texas high school graduates are automatically admitted to the university. They make up 88% percent of the students admitted.
By agreeing to hear a major case (Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin) involving race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas, the court thrust affirmative action back into the public and political discourse after years in which it had mostly faded from view. Both supporters and opponents of affirmative action said they saw the announcement — and the change in the court’s makeup since 2003 — as a signal that the court’s five more conservative members might be prepared to do away with racial preferences in higher education...
The consequences of such a decision would be striking. It would, all sides agree, reduce the number of African-American and Latino students at nearly every selective college and graduate school, with more Asian-American and white students gaining entrance instead...
Ms. Fisher is soon to graduate from Louisiana State University. Lawyers for the University of Texas said that meant she had not suffered an injury that a court decision could address, meaning she does not have standing to sue.
Ms. Fisher’s argument is that Texas cannot have it both ways. Having implemented a race-neutral program to increase minority admissions, she says, Texas may not supplement it with a race-conscious one. Texas officials said the additional effort was needed to make sure that individual classrooms contained a “critical mass” of minority students.
"....without affirmative action the acceptance rate for African-American candidates likely would fall nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants likely would be cut in half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent. While these declines are dramatic, the authors note that the long-term impact could be worse."It would be tragic and ironic if affirmative action ends while a black man is in the White House. We cannot passively allow that to happen. Certainly, civil rights law organizations will file amicus briefs in favor of affirmative action. However, the legal strategy is only one aspect of the struggle.
