Trayvon Martin’s parents: Juror B29′s revelations ‘devastating’

by theGrio 

The parents of Trayvon Martin reacted Thursday to an interviewa juror in the George Zimmerman trial gave to ABC News, in which she admitted that she ultimately, she didn’t hold out for a conviction.

The Juror, known only as B29, or “Maddy,” since she revealed herself — including showing her face — to ABC’s Robin Roberts, said Zimmerman “got away with murder” in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, but that Florida law, as understood by the jury, made it impossible to convict.

“I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end,” she said during the interview, for which ABC News aired clips on Thursday. “That’s where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.”

Zimmerman was acquitted on second degree murder and manslaughter charges July 14th.

Maddy, a nurse’s aide and the lone non-white juror on the panel, said she is having trouble sleeping after the verdict.

“It’s hard for me to sleep,” she told ABC. “It’s hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin’s death. And as I carry him on my back, I’m hurting as much Trayvon’s Martin’s mother because there’s no way that any mother should feel that pain,” she said.

Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin issued the following statement Thursday night:

It is devastating for my family to hear the comments from juror B29, comments which we already knew in our hearts to be true. That George Zimmerman literally got away with murder.

This new information challenges our nation once again to do everything we can to make sure that this never happens to another child. That’s why Tracy and I have launched The Trayvon Martin Foundation to try and take something very painful and negative and turn it into something positive as a legacy to our son.

The full interview with Juror B29 airs Friday morning.

Why White People Don't See Racism

By Keith Boykin/BET.Com

Next week I will participate in a racial discrimination hearing against a Manhattan night club that frisked and searched me when I attended on a "Black night" but does not search patrons on mostly white nights.

Last week, I was accused of stealing an iPhone by a white woman in Miami who came up to me and asked if she could search my pockets to find it. It was not a joke or a pickup line.

And just last month, I had to pull out my own iPhone to photograph and report the license plate and medallion number of a taxicab driver in New York's Union Square who refused to pick me up and then drove across the street to pick up a white customer seconds later.

For many African-Americans, I suspect these stories aren't entirely surprising. As President Obama said last week, racism is a daily part of our lives. Like air and water, it's part of the environment in which we live. Yet far too many white Americans still live in denial about its persistence.

That's the conclusion to be drawn not just from anecdotal experience but from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Wednesday that showed a vast disparity between white and Black perceptions on race relations. The poll, conducted after George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting unarmed 17-year-oldTrayvon Martin, found that 52 percent of whites think race relations are "good" in America while 58 percent of Blacks describe race relations as "bad."

The new poll numbers follow similar results from a Washington Post-ABC News poll two days earlier. In that poll, 86 percent of Blacks disapproved of the Zimmerman verdict while only 31 percent of whites felt that way. Even more disappointing is that 86 percent of African-Americans say Blacks and other minorities do not get equal treatment under the law, while only 41 percent of whites think that's true.

So what explains the disconnect?

Years ago, I heard a law professor explain what I call the "magnet analogy." Remember those big red and silver horseshoe magnets from high school? Now imagine you had to walk around the world with a huge horseshoe magnet on your neck. Aside from the heavy burden of carrying the extra weight, you'd quickly see the world a lot differently from those without the magnet.

The first thing you'd notice – there's a lot of metal in the world. Keys, coins, cell phones, even appliances would suddenly get a lot more of your attention. Why? Because the magnet attracts them. But those without the magnet would continue to remain oblivious to the metal assault on your body.

That's the experience for African-Americans every day. We're surrounding and inundated by the metal of racism while those who do not carry the magnet of Blackness remain oblivious to our experience. To them, racism is a thing of the past.

The problem is we need to recognize how new and subtle forms of race bias have replaced the old overt acts of racial discrimination. Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion explains how brain science has identified subconscious racial bias taking place in "nanoseconds" at subliminal levels. "There's something that police officers and college students and George Zimmerman all have in common," she told MSNBC's Melissa Harris Perry recently. "And that is that they're more likely to shoot a black man with a wallet than they are to shoot a white man with a gun." They call it "shooter bias."

Unfortunately, our laws and our public discourse haven't kept up with the changes in racism. Many whites are still stuck in the 1960s image of overt bigotry, of Klansmen burning crosses and segregationist governors blocking schoolhouse doors. They may know a parent or a grandparent who still uses the N-word, but as long as they refrain from using it themselves then they can't possibly be racist, they think.

But Paula Deen aside, modern racism isn't really about the N-word. New code words like Detroit, Chicago, "Stand Your Ground," voter ID, food stamps and welfare now carry the same impact with dog whistle messages too subtle to be reported by many in the media. This seemingly race-neutral language allows the majority to engage in public discourse under the mantle of innocence and thus dismiss the vestiges and effects of hundreds of years of legally sanctioned white supremacy. The only racists in this vision are the people who complain about racism.

That's why the U.S. Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act last month and argued it had outlived its utility. And that's why George Zimmerman's defense attorney Mark O'Mara last week told Fox News's Sean Hannity that his client, a known killer with a long arrest record, was just a "meek, mild guy without a racist bone in his body."

If you kill an unarmed Black boy or fan the flames of white resentment on talk radio, you're a "patriot." But if you help the family of the young Black boy who was killed, you're a "race hustler." To be white in America allows you the freedom to remain oblivious to these distinctions.

Yes, this dialogue must be a two-way conversation. But until white Americans examine their own racial privilege and open their eyes to the experience of Black Americans, they'll never notice the magnet we carry every day.

Limbaugh Accuses DOJ "Peacemakers" Of Organizing Anti-Zimmerman Protests

JUSTIN BERRIER/Media Matters For America

Rush Limbaugh seized on a report that government officials attended rallies related to George Zimmerman to accuse the Department of Justice of "instigating race riots" when in fact, the officials acted as peacekeepers to "defuse community anger."

On his radio show, Limbaugh read from a Judicial Watch post which claimed that a DOJ unit called the Community Relations Service (CRS) "deployed to Sanford, FL to organize and manage rallies against Zimmerman." The post highlighted documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests which detailed spending on activities such as providing "technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American male."

Limbaugh claimed the documents proved that the DOJ was "organizing anti-Zimmerman rallies," going on to say that "the United States government has been converted by Obama and [Eric] Holder into a community organizing agitator bunch." Limbaugh concluded that "this regime saw an opportunity to turn something into a profoundly racial case for the express purpose of ripping the country apart":

But the documents do not show the CRS organizing rallies against Zimmerman, only providing support andtechnical assistance for them. In fact, as the Miami Herald reported, the unit worked to "defuse community anger hardening along the fault lines of race, color and national origin":

[I]n the weeks after the Feb. 26, 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a city representative picked up the phone and called Thomas Battles, a quiet force who has worked almost three decades mending racially damaged communities.

The federal mediator works for the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service (CRS), a stealth federal operation that works to defuse community anger hardening along the fault lines of race, color and national origin.

The mediators are called the peacemakers.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that the unit "reached out to the city's spiritual and civic leaders to help cool headed emotions" and brokered "deals between the city officials and residents to help prevent violence and lay the groundwork for peace":

When racial tensions flared in Sanford, a league of secretive peacemakers reached out to the city's spiritual and civic leaders to help cool heated emotions after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February.

When civil-rights organizers wanted to demonstrate, these federal workers taught them how to peacefully manage crowds.

They even arranged a police escort for college students to ensure safe passage for their 40-mile march from Daytona Beach to Sanford to demand justice.

As national figures and sign-waving protesters grabbed the spotlight after Trayvon's death, federal workers from a little-known branch of the Department of Justice labored away behind the scenes, quietly brokering deals between the city officials and residents to help prevent violence and lay the groundwork for peace.

According to the CRS website, the services they performed in Sanford are precisely what the unit is intended to do, and officials are only deployed "when requested or accepted by the parties":

The Community Relations Service is the Department's "peacemaker" for community conflicts and tensions arising from differences of race, color, and national origin. Created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, CRS is the only Federal agency dedicated to assist State and local units of government, private and public organizations, and community groups with preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions, incidents, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial stability and harmony.

[...]

For more than 45 years, CRS has been asked to provide its experienced mediators to help local communities resolve conflicts and disturbances relating to race, color, or national origin. Each year CRS' highly skilled conciliators bring hundreds of community-wide conflicts to peaceful closure across America and its territories.