Law that enabled Trayvon Martin killing: ‘Hard to imagine a more radical attack on the justice system as we know it’
Florida lawmakers and the NRA are operating within a broader ideological framework. As NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer put it: “Through time, in this country, what I like to call bleeding heart criminal coddlers want you to give a criminal an even break, so that when you’re attacked, you’re supposed to turn around and run, rather than standing your ground and protecting yourself and your family and your property … Taking away the rights of law-abiding people and putting them in jeopardy of being prosecuted and then sued by criminals who were injured when they were committing crimes against victims is wrong.”

This rationale has several key hallmarks of conservative ideology: It adopts the liberal language of rights – but only to take them away from some, while turning them into privileges for others. It also pretends to be protecting the law-abiding against the criminal, and to oppose the erosion of traditional rights by the presumably liberal “bleeding heart criminal coddlers”. But the reality is exactly the opposite. Outside the home, the duty to retreat is the traditional common law doctrine. Hammer and the NRA are the ones radically altering the law. And the second prong – prohibiting criminal prosecution – goes even further.

“As the law stands, it contradicts the entire purpose behind the justice system. It takes the decision out of the hands of the jurors,” said Brian Cavanagh, head of the state attorney’s homicide unit, commenting with regard to a Broward County case in December 2011. It’s hard to imagine a more radical attack on the justice system as we know it.

http://tinyurl.com/89bjhvb

Mass state senator’s proposed legislation resembles  FL ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at issue in Trayvon Martin’s death

Under the legislation by Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, a Barre Democrat, the state would expand its current “Castle Doctrine,” which says a person has no duty to retreat from intruders at home before using deadly force.

Brewer’s bill would expand that Castle principle to using deadly force in public anyplace the person has a right to be. The principle is called the Stand Your Ground Principle. More than two dozen states have passed either the Castle Doctrine, Stand Your Ground or both, according to the Associated Press.

Florida’s “stand your ground law” is receiving new scrutiny after a 17-year-old, unarmed black man was shot to death by a neighborhood watch captain in a gated community. The captain is claiming self-defense during a confrontation.

http://tinyurl.com/8yn55q6

What is at the core of Occupy Wall Street movement?

(video)

Obstacles to unity between Occupy and US blacks ‘a political cultural problem.’

http://tinyurl.com/7dnrlwf

Wall Street Wage Gaps Give Women Yet Another Reason To Occupy

“Women who want to earn more on Wall Street than their male colleagues have one reliable option. They can set up a shoe-shine stand in Lower Manhattan.”

So concluded Bloomberg reporter Frank Bass after crunching Census data on the gender wage gap in various professions. His findings: Out of 265 major occupations, service work such as shoe shining and personal care was the only one in which women earned, on average, more than men ($1.02 to every $1). And the high-paying jobs of Wall Street had the biggest gap:

The six jobs with the largest gender gap in pay and at least 10,000 men and 10,000 women were in the Wall Street-heavy financial sector: insurance agents, managers, clerks, securities sales agents, personal advisers and other specialists.

http://tinyurl.com/6po9sew

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/25/12” »

Hundreds Rally in Harvard Square for Trayvon Martin, Against Pending State Law That Would Protect Martin’s Killer in Mass

The hundreds of people who rallied in the Harvard Square pit tonight weren’t just there to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. Nor were they merely there to call attention to the atrocity that was unleashed on the state of Florida, where the unarmed 17-year-old Martin was shot and killed last month by George Zimmerman, an overzealous neighborhood watchdog who has yet to be arrested.

The throng of activists and onlookers was also calling attention to an alarming situation in the commonwealth – one that could soon lead to any number of comparable incidents happening right here. It seems there’s a sticky piece of legislation floating in the Massachusetts legislature – Senate Bill 661 – that would protect murderers like Zimmerman.

http://tinyurl.com/6uarqv8

Occupy Wall Street plans return to spotlight – but in what form?

Demonstrators torn over whether to concentrate on economic inequality or to move towards protesting police brutality.

http://tinyurl.com/6vyqs68

Occupy Earth: State Of The Environment Fundamentally Linked to Economic Injustice

From New York to St. Louis to Los Angeles, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) will be buzzing with spring activities throughout the United States. One of its many pending actions is to join forces with the environmental movement to launch Earth Month on March 24.

Dubbed “Disrupt Dirty Power,” the environmentally-focused occupy movement will support direct actions around the U.S. and abroad to call for both environmental and economic justice. These actions, according to the website www.disruptdirtypower.org, seek to “evict Wall Street polluters,” focusing on “dirty banks, big oil, big coal, fracking, uranium.” It claims that “the climate can’t wait and neither can we.” Initiated by an OWS affinity group called 99forEarth, the effort has been joined by various environmental groups.

http://tinyurl.com/7rzfs74

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/24/12” »

Facing protests from Occupy groups, Southern CA car dealerships pull advertising from Rush Limbaugh show

Toyota Carlsbad, Lexus Carlsbad and Lexus Escondido dealerships have pulled advertising from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show on KOGO-AM 600 – a move that has prompted local groups to cancel a protest they had planned for this weekend.

Occupy Encinitas and Women’s Occupy San Diego were planning to picket outside the Toyota Carlsbad dealership to protest its support of Limbaugh, who they say is guilty of recently using “misogynistic hate speech toward women,” according to a news release from the group.

“Mr. Limbaugh’s misogynistic hate speech toward women was most recently demonstrated in a three-day diatribe disparaging law school student Sandra Fluke; including a demand that Ms. Fluke make and post ‘sex tapes on the internet’ and a characterization of women who use birth control as ‘sluts’ and ‘prostitutes,'” the news release reads.

http://tinyurl.com/7hm79jp

Federal student loan interest rate set to double

Federal subsidized Stafford loan interest rates are set to increase to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent  for undergraduate students on July 1.

Western Michigan University Director of Financial Aid Mark Delorey says the federal government increasing rates fits perfectly into a pattern of “eroding support” already displayed.

http://tinyurl.com/7kufvv4

Occupiers march for Trayvon Martin at “Million Hoodie March”

On Wednesday night, around 5,000 people took to the streets of New York to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old African-American who was killed by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, last month. Martin was armed only with a pack of Skittles when Zimmerman shot him, claiming the boy looked “suspicious.” Martin’s crime – the same one committed by Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Ramarley Graham and others – appears to have been walking while black. Zimmerman has not been charged in the killing, despite a national outcry.

Organizers of the “Million hoodie march” for Trayvon Martin asked protesters to converge at Manhattan’s Union Square on Wednesday evening wearing hooded sweatshirts, to symbolically highlight the profiling used against non-white youths in hoodies. The plaza, from which Occupy supporters were evicted by police the night before, was once again full of Occupy participants and hundreds of others galvanized by the Trayvon Martin case. Many young, black marchers donned hoodies and held signs reading, “Am I next?”

http://tinyurl.com/72adnwj

Continue reading “The OB Media Rundown for 3/23/12” »