It’s tough being a Floridian these days. Sure we were known in the past for making some pretty horrible mistakes, for example screwing up a presidential election. But recently we’ve outdone ourselves by pissing on the rights of our fellow citizens in order to build into the swamp, and giving a billionaire a baseball stadium. Said billionaire then goes and hires Ozzie Guillen to skipper the team? Really?
It’s as if I need to show up to the next HR conference wearing Dolphins jersey and a paper bag on my head.
I do wish to share one bright shining example of reason set adrift in this sea of stupidity and sunshine. The best part is that the writers of the blog remain (at least to the general public) anonymous.
I got turned on to the Justice Building Blog a few years ago and remain a daily, loyal reader. Some of the stuff they write/discuss is over my head as I’m just a lay person and not an attorney, other times; they write what columnists from the Herald should be saying with more frequency.
However recently one of the authors wrote a small bit about the Trayvon Martin tragedy that I feel compelled to share with you:
A Florida Grand Jury will be impaneled to investigate the death of an unarmed seventeen year old minor child. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a 26 year old neighborhood watch volunteer.
We just can’t help but think that if the roles were reversed and Trayvon Martin shot and killed Mr. George Zimmerman that Trayvon Martin would have been immediately taken into custody under the “arrest now, let the jury sort it out five years from now” philosophy we all too often encounter.
So what’s different about this case? Nothing other than the respective races of the individuals. Sorry, but do you really think the police and state attorney would have been so deliberative if the shooter was an African-American teenager? In our experience we have never seen that type of caution.
We are not advocating the lynching of Mr. Zimmerman. Nor do we decry the failure to immediately arrest him. Getting the facts and getting it right is important. The delay just becomes harder to swallow because we all know the matter would have been handled differently if the roles were reversed. – Justice Building Blog, March 21, 2012
Well said Rumpole, well said.
