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Race Industry Leeches

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Photo Credit: frontpagemagThe trial of George Zimmerman is over, but the persecution of him by the race industry isn’t. The Department of Justice is currently combing through the case to find some pretext, no matter how specious, for charging Zimmerman with a violation of civil-rights laws. No matter that the FBI investigation has eliminated race as a factor in Zimmerman’s actions, or that the prosecutors in Florida studiously ignored race as a motive. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the DOJ has become the Luca Brasi of the race industry, enforcing the self-serving, racialist narrative that in part propelled Holder’s boss into the White House. So don’t be surprised if the DOJ seizes the opportunity.

Indeed, the specter of a DOJ trial is just the latest in a series of events, from the Duke lacrosse team prosecution to Holder’s abuse of the Voting Rights Act, that demonstrate the mendacious, hypocritical racial ideology that permeates our politics and institutions. The central theme of this narrative is the endemic, eternal white racism that accounts for every dysfunction in the black community. No amount of progress, from the remarkable expansion of the black middle class to the utter discrediting of old-school racists like the Ku Klux Klan, can alter this narrative, for the simple reason that a significant number of black politicians, professors, federal and state employees, and activists gain power and money by exploiting the “racism” meme.

Consider the reaction to the trial from the usual race-hack subjects. Hilary Shelton, head of the NAACP Washington Bureau, said, “Those of us who are fathers, particularly of African-American boys, find it [the acquittal] shockingly frightening.” The message, he says, is “Not only can we do this, we can get away with it.”

Well, what should be “shockingly frightening” is the fact that 64% of black children live in homes without a father. Huge numbers of black men are siring children they do not take responsibility for, and are getting away with it. This means that Shelton is speaking about a minority of black men when he evokes “those of us who are fathers,” a minority that no doubt comprises those blacks who are better educated and better employed than the other two-thirds. In other words, Shelton is exploiting the social and economic dysfunctions of under-educated, under-employed clients of the welfare state in order to justify the power and influence of the NAACP.

Read more from this story HERE.

Zimmerman Trial’s Real Goal: Destroy the Second Amendment

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By Jonathon Moseley. Destroying the Second Amendment and the people’s right of self-defense was the real goal of the George Zimmerman prosecution. Liberals hoped to scare gun owners, regardless of the eventual verdict. Traumatizing and intimidating people from using a firearm to defend themselves were what this case was really about.

This prosecution was an attempt to overturn Florida’s “stand your ground law.” Florida dramatically changed the law effective October 1, 2005 by amending Florida Statute 776.013(3). Previously, one had to run away if possible when threatened.

But many believed that this put the burden of proof on the victim of aggression. Victims of crime would have to prove that they could not have escaped safely and they had no other choice but to use deadly force. Florida’s legislature was persuaded that the “duty to retreat” often put the innocent party in an impossible position to prove their innocence. While deadly force should never be used unless necessary, the victims of crime sometimes faced an unwinnable challenge.

But liberals were outraged. Gun control activists hysterically called it “Florida’s Shoot First Law.” Opponents passed out fliers at Miami International Airport scaring tourists, hoping to blackmail Florida’s powerful tourism industry and pressure the Florida legislature into a repeal.

Florida’s “stand your ground law” had to be reversed or nullified. If owning a gun is useful for self-defense, then banning guns becomes more difficult. So self-defense had to be eliminated so that owning a gun would have no purpose. How else could liberals create a population dependent upon government? Read more from this story HERE.

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Ted Nugent says lesson in Trayvon Martin incident: ‘Teach your children not to attack people’

By Jeff Poor. On Dennis Miller’s radio show on Monday, rock and reality show star Ted Nugent sounded off on the outcome of the trial of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of charges in the murder of Trayvon Martin…

“I’m 65 years old this year, Dennis, and I’ve never seen such ugly race relations since the white and black water fountains in Detroit went away,” Nugent said. “We were on an even keel. We were on the upgrade. I think racism for all practical purposes was gone five, six years ago and it’s back with a vengeance and it breaks my heart. But here’s the ultimate lesson, if everyone would take a deep breath — I hear a lot of squawking that parents go, ‘Well, that could have been my kid, that could have been my dead child.’ Well, here’s a little update for you: Teach your children not to attack people, thank you very much.” Read more from this story HERE.

Is This Still America? (+video)

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Photo Credit: TownhallBy Thomas Sowell. There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable.

Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.

More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public’s faith in that system and their country. People who have increasingly asked, during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, “Is this still America?” may feel some measure of relief.

But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in an absence of serious evidence — which became painfully more obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial — will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.

The political perversion of the criminal justice system began early and at the top, with the President of the United States. Unlike other public officials who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: WNDEx-Obama Czar: ‘Racism Won’

By Aaron Klein. Racism won in the Trayvon Martin shooting case, declared Van Jones, President Obama’s former “green jobs” adviser.

“The verdict: Racism won. #TrayvonMartin,” Jones tweeted.

The former White House staffer made the comments even as it was reported that an extensive FBI investigation found no evidence indicating George Zimmerman racially profiled Martin. Read more from this story HERE.

Zimmerman Getting Gun Back, Wants to Go to Law School (+video)

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Photo Credit: APGeorge Zimmerman to Get His Gun Back

By Matt Gutman. George Zimmerman will get his gun back now that he has been cleared of murder and his lawyer said today that Zimmerman needs the weapon “even more” than before.

Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara also practically dared the family of Trayvon Martin to file a widely expected civil suit against him, but said that Zimmerman might be filing lawsuits of his own.

O’Mara, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, suggested that Zimmerman has no regrets about carrying a gun on Feb. 26, 2012, the night he killed Martin, a teenager.

Prosecutors in their closing argument had said that Zimmerman getting out of his car with a loaded gun to follow the teenager led to Martin’s shooting. He was acquitted Saturday night of murder in Martin’s death in a case that has sparked widespread outrage among supporters of the Martin family.

The lawyer said Zimmerman, 29, will be entitled to get his Kel Tec 9 pistol back. Read more from this story HERE.

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Zimmerman wants to go to law school to help others like him – friends

By Chris Francescani. After his acquittal on murder charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman may go to law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes like himself, close friends told Reuters on Sunday.

The 29-year old was found not guilty late Saturday for shooting the unarmed black teenager in a case that sparked a national debate on race and gun laws. One of his first calls was to defense witness John Donnelly and his wife Leanne Benjamin.

They got to know Zimmerman in 2004 when he and a black friend opened up an insurance office in a Florida building where Benjamin worked. They grew close and the couple spent time with him during the trial.

Over dinner with Zimmerman recently, Benjamin said he told them he would like to go to law school.

“I’d like to help other people like me,” she quoted him as telling them. Read more from this story HERE.

Unbelievable: Fed’s Now Considering Prosecution of Zimmerman for Civil Rights Violations (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Fox News. The Justice Department said Sunday that it will review the George Zimmerman case for possible civil rights violations, after a jury acquitted the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

As Zimmerman’s attorney cautioned that his client’s safety is at risk, the Justice Department responded to appeals from NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and several lawmakers to keep investigating the defendant.

The department may find itself in a vulnerable spot. Last week, a conservative watchdog accused an obscure agency within the DOJ of helping support the “pressure campaign” against Zimmerman in the wake of the shooting last year. Judicial Watch claimed documents and public accounts showed “extraordinary intervention” by the department in the campaign that eventually led to Zimmerman’s prosecution.

The department, however, claims that it dispatched agency representatives to reduce tensions in the community – not to take sides.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Zimmerman Verdict

By The Wall Street Journal. An American criminal defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that’s the standard to keep in mind when considering the jury’s not guilty verdict Saturday for George Zimmerman in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The case has been fraught with racial politics from the start, but inside the Sanford, Florida courtroom, the jurors had to wrestle with the standard that is a hallmark of American justice. No one but Mr. Zimmerman knows what happened that early evening in 2012 when he followed Martin, an unfamiliar young, African-American male visiting the neighborhood. A scuffle ensued, Zimmerman shot Martin in what he says was self-defense, and prosecutors never produced an eyewitness or even much evidence to disprove Mr. Zimmerman.

The verdict compounds the tragedy for the Martin family, but no one can claim that their son was not represented in court. The state threw everything it had at Mr. Zimmerman. Gov. Rick Scott replaced local prosecutors with a special team from Jacksonville, the judge often ruled favorably for the prosecution, including the addition of the lesser manslaughter charge (in addition to second-degree murder) at the end of the trial…

[But] Benjamin Jealous of the NAACP is already lobbying Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Mr. Zimmerman on federal civil-rights charges. To do so and win a conviction would require proof that Mr. Zimmerman was motivated by racial animus when the record shows little more than a reference by Mr. Zimmerman to “punks” in a comment to a police dispatcher.

Millions of Americans would see such federal charges as an example of double jeopardy, and a politicized prosecution to boot. In this context, it was good to see Mr. Obama’s statement Sunday that “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.” Read more from this story HERE.

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FBI records: agents found no evidence that Zimmerman was racist

By Frances Robles and Scott Hiaason. After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday show.

Even the lead detective in the case, Sanford Det. Chris Serino, told agents that he thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon because of his attire and the circumstances — but not his race.

Serino saw Zimmerman as “having little hero complex, but not as a racist.”

The Duval County State Attorney released another collection of evidence in the Zimmerman murder case Thursday, including reports from FBI agents who investigated whether any racial bias was involved in Trayvon’s Feb. 26 killing…

Federal agents interviewed Zimmerman’s neighbors and co-workers, but none said Zimmerman had expressed racial animus at any time prior to the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, a black teen, in a confrontation at a Sanford housing complex. As Sanford police investigated the circumstances of Martin’s death, the FBI opened a parallel probe to determine if Martin’s civil rights had been violated. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APDershowitz Calls for Federal Civil Rights Case Over “Prosecutorial Tyrant”

By David A. Patten. Famed defense lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz is calling for a federal investigation into civil rights violations stemming from the George Zimmerman case — but he says the probe should focus on prosecutorial misconduct rather than on allegations of racial profiling and bias.

Speaking Sunday in an exclusive Newsmax interview, Dershowitz said the jury’s finding that Zimmerman was not guilty of either second-degree murder or manslaughter was “the right verdict.”

He added, “There was reasonable doubt all over the place.”

Immediately after the verdict was announced, however, the NAACP and outspoken activist Al Sharpton called on the Justice Department to launch a federal civil-rights probe, charging that the case had been racially tainted.

Dershowitz is calling for a civil-rights probe as well. But he contends the person whose rights were violated was Zimmerman. Read more from this story HERE.

“Zimmerman Verdict Means War” and Other Fallout from the Not Guilty Verdict

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Photo Credit: WNDNew Black Panthers: Zimmerman Verdict Means ‘War’

By Aaron Klein. The George Zimmerman verdict is a declaration of war that only the devil can applaud, according to the Twitter feed for the New Black Panther Party.

The Twitter account, managed by the group’s national chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz, further urged followers to “take to the streets [and] stay there.”

“Were at war,” Shabbazz Tweeted. “Its (sic) silly and immoral to call for peace when war has been declared.”

The NBPP slammed what it called the “white mans (sic) justice system,” claiming the courts base their law on “the white is right theory.”

“Only a devil would applaud that verdict. Only natural born devil. By applauding that verdict you in fact admit that you are a devil,” wrote Shabbazz. Read more from this story HERE.

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$10,000 Offered for Zimmerman’s Head

By Drew Zahn. Now that George Zimmerman has been found not guilty in the murder trial of black teenager Trayvon Martin, threats that some may take “justice” – or vengeance as the case may be – into their own hands become cause for concern.

New York Giants footballer Victor Cruz, for example, tweeted after the verdict was announced, “Zimmerman doesn’t last a year before the hood catches up to him.”

Atlanta Falcons footballer Roddy White followed up with a similar tweet, “All them jurors should go home tonight and kill themselves for letting a grown man get away with killing a kid.”

Though both players later apologized, the tweets reflect upon the words of black activist Mikhail Muhammad, who claimed last year he had professional athletes’ and celebrities’ financial backing in putting a $10,000 bounty on Zimmerman’s head.

While distributing “wanted dead or alive” posters at a press conference in Jacksonville, Fla., Muhammad, the southern regional director of the New Black Panther Party, stated, “The heat is on [Zimmerman]. He’s never going to be able to sleep peacefully. The family of George Zimmerman must understand, a life for a life, a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. If you kill my damn baby, we’re going to kill your damn baby.” Read more from this story HERE.

See the NBPP tweet stream for yourself below:

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Photo Credit: Getty Images‘No justice, no peace’: pro-Trayvon MArtin protesters clash with police in NYC, LA.

By Jason Howerton. Demonstrations erupted across the United States ranging from dozens to hundreds – in support of the family of Trayvon Martin. Protesters marched against the not guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of the unarmed black teenager. Zimmerman claims he shot Martin in self-defense after being physically attacked.

At New York City’s Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan, congregants wore hooded sweatshirts – as the 17-year-old Martin did the night he was shot.

And in Manhattan’s Union Square, hundreds of people gathered to voice their passions over the verdict, hoisting placards with images of Martin. Protesters shouted a number of chants demanding “justice” for Trayvon Martin.

The chants in NYC included, “No justice, no peace,” “What do you want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” and “Trayvon! Trayvon! Trayvon!” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Occupy Oakland/TwitterProtesters in Oakland burn flag, smash windows over Zimmerman verdict

By Joe Newby. Protesters in Oakland angry over the not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman case went on a rampage, smashing windows, starting small fires and burned a U.S. flag at a local area McDonald’s, The Blaze reported Sunday.

The protests attracted anywhere from a few dozen to a couple hundred people, Madeleine Morgenstern said. Police said protests continued into the early hours on Sunday.

Some in the crowd broke windows on businesses and started small fires in the streets.

The Oakland Tribune said some of the windows in its downtown office were smashed and video from a helicopter show people attempting to start fires in the street. Others can be seen spray painting anti-police graffiti.

Vandals smashed windows at Dogwood Restaurant located at Telegraph and 17th St. in Oakland, ABC7 reporter John Alston said in a tweet. He later said windows were smashed in an Oakland Sears store. Read more from this story HERE.

Zimmerman’s Defense Attorney: Before I Knew Him, I Thought George Was Racist (+video)

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Thanks to the media’s habit of showing beatific, outdated photos of Trayvon Martin, many Americans who only casually followed the trial of George Zimmerman incorrectly believed Martin to have been younger than he actually was at the time of his death. In a Friday interview, Zimmerman’s lead defense attorney, Mark O’Mara admitted that he was one of them.

Speaking with CNN correspondent Martin Savidge, O’Mara denounced what he called a “wonderfully created and crafted public relations campaign” by the attorney for Martin’s family, Benjamin Crump and his allies. According to O’Mara, had they not injected a racial element into the story, Zimmerman would never have been tried.

Such was the power of the narrative of a bruising white man deliberately gunning down a small boy out of racial malice that even O’Mara, a seasoned defense attorney very familiar with media sensationalism, bought into it.

Read more from this story HERE.

George Zimmerman: NOT GUILTY (+video)

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By Yamiche Alcindor. George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, has been found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

The verdict is the culmination of a case that captured the nation’s attention and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America’s history. The not guilty verdict means the jury of six women found that Zimmerman justifiably used deadly force and reasonably believed that such force was “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” to himself— Florida’s definition of self-defense.

Zimmerman showed no emotion as the verdict was read. After the verdict was read, he smiled slightly and shook hands with one of his lawyers.

The women decided Zimmerman didn’t “intentionally commit an act or acts that caused death” or demonstrate a “depraved mind without regard for human life” –Florida’s definitions of manslaughter and second degree murder, respectively.

“Its means there was reasonable doubt,” said Susan Constantine, a jury consultant and body language expert who attended Zimmerman’s trial regularly. “They just could not put the pieces together.” Read more from this story HERE.

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State never proved its case, legal analysts say

By David Ovalle. After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford, Fla., neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

So for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even a lesser “compromise” verdict of manslaughter, acquitting Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a reasonable way to protect his own life.

The acquittal was a stinging blow for prosecutors and their decision to file the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman, who was not initially arrested by Sanford police after claiming self-defense. And it was a resounding embrace of the defense’s strategy during closing arguments not just to establish that prosecutors hadn’t proven Zimmerman guilty, but also to show he was “absolutely” innocent.

“The jury clearly believed that you have a right to defend yourself,” said Jude M. Faccidomo, the former president of Miami’s Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Especially when cases are so gray, like this one was, self-defense really resonates because people can associate with being afraid.”

And while some also have questioned the state attorney’s office acceptance of a mostly white jury, a more diverse panel would have returned the same verdict, lawyers who have watched the case believe. Read more from this story HERE.

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Guilty until proven innocent: how the press prosecuted Zimmerman while stoking racial tensions

By John Nolte. As we await the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who claims to have shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in self-defense, this seems the perfect time to reflect on the media’s cynical and dishonest role in turning a local crime into a national obsession.

As you will see below, by hook and crook, the mainstream media did everything in its still-potent power to not only push for the prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman (the police originally chose not to charge him) but also to gin up racial tensions where none needed to exist.

It all started with the anchor of a major television network (Al Sharpton) inserting himself in the story to spread division and hate; it continued straight through to the closing days of the trial when another major news network, desperate to keep a fabricated racial narrative alive, propagated the portrayal of Zimmerman as part of a racial group that doesn’t exist — the “white Hispanic.”

In-between, there has been an astonishing amount of malicious fraud and lies, all in an effort to serve a president, stir racial hatred, and influence the justice system. Read more from this story HERE.

Zimmerman Trial Exposes the Failure of Law Enforcement to Protect Us From Crime

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralWhen you get run over by a freight train, the cause of death is usually delivered by the locomotive…Not the caboose.

The rainy night of February 26, in Sanford Florida, Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman, neighborhood watch captain for the Twin Lakes community. Zimmerman is the figurative caboose in the tragic tale in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

The Twin Lakes neighborhood that George Zimmerman became neighborhood watch captain had suffered eight burglaries plus other crimes, in the 15 months prior to Trayvon Martin’s shooting.

One of the burglaries was a brazen, horrific day time break in to the home of Olivia Bertalan who was alone with her infant as two men broke in and ransacked her home, while she and her baby huddled in terror in a bedroom. The two criminals left with her valuables before police arrived.

This was the final straw for citizens in the community and it was decided to organize a Neighborhood Watch because police were not preventing the crime being inflicted on them. So the community resorted to tactics to try to defend themselves.

Perhaps if the Sanford Police Department had more resources, it could have sent extra patrols to the Twin lakes community and focused on crime abatement…Rather than citizens taking it upon themselves to enhance their protection.

The saying when danger is seconds away, the police are just minutes away, could not have been any more evident as the Twin lakes community was assailed by crime. Time after time police came after the crime was committed; to take reports and statements….But this did nothing to prevent the crime in the first place.

The Zimmerman trial spotlighted detective work, forensic experts, medical examiners and skilled attorneys trying to persuade a jury of George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Perhaps what should be on trial is how law enforcement failed to protect the Twin Lakes community from crime in the first place and why certain steps weren’t followed by law enforcement to help the community to protect itself…The legal system turned on this community and George Zimmerman for only trying to defend themselves from crime: Zimmerman is on trial for his freedom and the Twin Lakes community had to pay a one million dollar judgement

The freight train that killed Trayvon Martin that night was the legal systems failure to protect citizens from crime. George Zimmerman and the Twin Lakes community were only the caboose in that long train of events.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Mark Steyn: The Legal Absurdities of the George Zimmerman Trial

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By Mark Steyn. Just when I thought the George Zimmerman “trial” couldn’t sink any lower, the prosecutorial limbo dancers of the State of Florida magnificently lowered their own bar in the final moments of their cable-news celebrity.

In real justice systems, the state decides what crime has been committed and charges somebody with it. In the Zimmerman trial, the state’s “theory of the case” is that it has no theory of the case: Might be murder, might be manslaughter, might be aggravated assault, might be a zillion other things, but it’s something. If you’re a juror, feel free to convict George Zimmerman of whatever floats your boat.

Nailing a guy on something, anything, is a time-honored American tradition: If you can’t get Al Capone on the Valentine’s Day massacre, get him on his taxes. Americans seem to have a sneaky admiration for this sort of thing, notwithstanding that, as we now know, the government is happy to get lots of other people on their taxes, too. Ever since the president of the United States (a man so cautious and deferential to legal niceties that he can’t tell you whether the Egyptian army removing the elected head of state counts as a military coup until his advisors have finished looking into the matter) breezily declared that if he had a son he’d look like Trayvon, ever since the U.S. Department of so-called Justice dispatched something called its “Community Relations Services” to Florida to help organize anti-Zimmerman rallies at taxpayer expense, ever since the politically savvy governor appointed a “special prosecutor” and the deplorably unsavvy Sanford Police Chief was eased out, the full panoply of state power has been deployed to nail Zimmerman on anything.

How difficult can that be in a country in which a Hispanic Obama voter can be instantly transformed into the poster boy for white racism? Who ya gonna believe – Al Sharpton or your lying eyes? As closing arguments began on Thursday, the prosecutors asked the judge to drop the aggravated assault charge and instruct the jury on felony murder committed in the course of child abuse. Felony murder is a murder that occurs during a felony, and, according to the prosecution’s theory du jour, the felony George Zimmerman was engaged in that night was “child abuse,” on the grounds that Trayvon Martin, when he began beating up Zimmerman, was 17-years-old. This will come as news to most casual observers of the case, who’ve only seen young Trayvon in that beatific photo of him as a 12-year-old.

In that one pitiful closing moment, the case achieved its sublime reductio ad absurdum: After a year’s labors, after spending a million bucks, after calling a legion of risible witnesses, even after the lead prosecutor dragged in a department store mannequin and personally straddled it on the floor of the court, the state is back to where it all began – the ancient snapshot of a smiling middle-schooler that so beguiled American news editors, Trayvon Martin apparently being the only teenager in America to have gone entirely unphotographed in the second decade of the 21st century. And, if Trayvon is a child, his malefactor is by logical extension a child abuser. Read more from this story HERE.

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‘Justice for Trayvon’: Audio released of DOJ member urging action against George Zimmerman

By Jessica Chasmar. The legal watchdog Judicial Watch released an audio recording Thursday of a Department of Justice staffer urging Sanford, Fla., city officials and the minority advocacy group Dream Defenders to seek justice for Trayvon Martin, because “if a community perceives that there’s something wrong in the black community, there’s something wrong”…

Mr. Thomas Battles [regional director of the DOJ’s Community Relations Service] then introduced a member of the Dream Defenders.

“When Trayvon happened, for many of us, it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back,” the man said. “We had grown up in a state and environment where race is a way of life … We’re not from Sanford, but what Sanford represented to us was the very real problems going around this state and this country. We wanted to figure out how could we stand in solidarity, and how could we make this about not just justice for Trayvon, but using this moment and using the opportunity to honor his memory, to honor his spirit by working to bring down the various structures and the various systems that allow something like this to happen.” Read more from this story HERE.