Quote:
Originally Posted by 12thMan
Mooby, with all due respefct you're wrong friend. They didn't jump as soon as the story went national. It took the national media a while to respond and get involved. But the parents had to air their grievance to someone, didn't they? Off the top of my head, I could name a half dozen celebs, including the Miami Heat basketball team and Ray Lewis, and a few others who have been involved one way or another. So to make this about Al Sharpton is grossly unfair an frankly inaccurate. Ben Jealous and many other civil rights leaders have pushed for an arrest. To my knowledge, I've seen Jesse Jackson appear either on TV or with the family maybe twice. That's it.
But Al Sharpton is a red herring. This story is about the Martin family, a murdered teenager, and the Sanford community rallying to their side calling for an arrest. No one's calling for Zimmerman's head or publicly pronounced him guilty.
And since we're talking about due process and justice. Let's flip the coin for a second. The system has failed George Zimmerman horribly. Instead of collecting all the facts and properly detaining him, they allowed him to walk for a 40+ days and be prosecuted in the court of public opinion. The case, the evidence, and the possibility of this young man receiving a fair trial is now seriously in question. Whether he's ultimately convicted or not, he'll never ever have a normal life again. And that is a tragedy.
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12th, same respect to you as you are someone whose opinions I value on these boards. With that said, I don't want to make it seem like I'm singling out Jesse/Al for their involvement with this, because the story blew up without their help, and it was only natural they get involved with it once it happened. You are right in that they aren't the only high-profile people to get involved with this, because I am aware of plenty of people trying to bring attention to the cause (the Heat wearing hoodies to the game, the politicians wearing hoodies to work and subsequently getting kicked out for it, etc.) I'm just saying that I'm lumping in Al/Jesse with everyone else already saying Zimmerman should be locked up for murder because everybody else have already made their own conclusions before all facts have been revealed, and they have done the same thing.
The popular opinion is most definitely not to withhold judgement until all facts are known, and it's like you are saying (in your last paragraph, which I completely agree with), guilty or not the rest of Zimmerman's life will be horribly stressful on him as a result of all the hate coming in his direction. Now if he is guilty of racial profiling and intentionally murdering Trayvon it's an entirely different story, but I don't think it's as one-sided as the media is portraying it.
As far as "no one's calling for Zimmerman's head" well I beg to differ. A 10k bounty for a citizen's arrest and
distributing leaflets advertising Zimmerman as wanted dead or alive sounds like the NBPP calling for Zimmerman's head. Now sure, maybe they started calling for a citizen's arrest once they realized putting a bounty on someone through the press isn't a smart move, but the intention remains the same. I highly doubt they were doing anything besides trying to incite violence against Zimmerman.