Free Republic

After a year of unrest over how the justice system responded to the deaths of several unarmed African-American men, many people marking Martin Luther King’s Birthday on Monday were more rueful than celebratory. Some marchers in a small city in northern Alabama wore black shirts with the names of three of the men in white print: Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin. Two died in confrontations with police officers, and one with a neighborhood watch coordinator. In an acknowledgment of the complexity of the issue, the shirts also bore the names of Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, the two...

On Dec 4, 2014, the Black Student Union of UC Berkeley held the first of three protests. Students occupied The Golden Bear Cafe for 4.5 hours, the amount of time Michael Brown’s body lay in the street in Ferguson, Mo.Over the last month, the Black Student Union at UC Berkeley has organized three separate events to protest police killings of unarmed black men. Students have marched on the streets, through local businesses, and sat in at cafés. The demonstrations have allowed students to grieve, heal, and show solidarity with protesters in Ferguson and Staten Island. But they have also been...

The last several months have seen an outpouring of activism, with slogans coming in waves: “Justice for Mike Brown,” “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” and “I Can’t Breathe.” But the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has emerged to bind each flashpoint into one cause. The 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin and acquittal of George Zimmerman served as the first of these flashpoints, snowballing in August with the murder of Michael Brown. “Ferguson is the birthplace of what’s happening right now. In many ways, Ferguson is like ground zero of these protests,” says DeRay McKesson, who has been protesting and organizing in Ferguson...

George Zimmerman was arrested and charged with aggravated assault in Lake Mary Friday night, a Seminole County Sheriff's spokeswoman said. Zimmerman, 31, was booked into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility about 9:45 p.m. Friday where he was being held without bond, sheriff's spokeswoman Kim Cannaday said in a statement. Zimmerman is scheduled for a first appearance in court at about 9 a.m. Saturday. More information about the arrest was not immediately available.

George Zimmerman -- the man acquitted by a Florida jury over the death of Trayvon Martin -- was arrested Friday in Florida

SANFORD -- A Seminole County judge has set $5,000 bond for George Zimmerman, who was arrested Friday night in Lake Mary. The 31-year-old was booked around 9:45 p.m. for aggravated assault -- domestic violence with a weapon. According to Don West, Zimmerman's attorney, his client threw a wine bottle during the incident. Zimmerman is prohibited from contacting the victim, returning to her home or entering Volusia County. He must surrender all firearms by Tuesday, but will not have to wear a GPS monitoring device. He is due back in court at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 17 in front of Judge Donna...

SANFORD (CBSMiami/AP) —The man acquitted in the shooting death of a Florida teen has been arrested again. This time he is charged with aggravated assault, Florida authorities said. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office says the 31-year-old George Zimmerman was arrested in Lake Mary about 10 p.m. Friday and is being held at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility. The facility’s website says Zimmerman is scheduled for a court appearance at 9 a.m. Saturday.

3 years ago, Jared Bretherick was cruising in a car with his family close to Orlando when another vehicle, steered by Derek Dunning, nearly sideswiped their car. A brief confrontation ensued, during which Bretherick’s father dialed 911 and unveiled a holstered weapon. Dunning got back inside his car and began backing it up toward the Brethericks. When officers arrived at the scene, Bretherick was aiming his father’s gun at Dunning’s vehicle. He was detained, arrested and charged with aggravated assault. In Bretherick’s first court hearing, he pursued legal immunity under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. The statute, which attracted national...

​The notion Blacks are a threat is embedded so deep in the American psyche that a jury found it was not criminal for George Zimmerman to stalk and kill Trayvon Martin, a child, in his own neighborhood. It was inevitable there would a push back against the dynamic movement against police violence. It is unfortunate opponents are using the murder of two cops in Brooklyn on December 20 to try to suppress peaceful protests. Nonetheless, the reaction is also a necessary obstacle this new social movement has to navigate. After Officer Darren Wilson killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in...

The family of Trayvon Martin is speaking out against a group using the slain, unarmed teen’s name after they called for “dead cops” during a rally in New York City on December 13. While many leaders in the Black community have been begging for peace following the deaths of unarmed teen Michael Brown and unarmed Staten Island father Eric Garner by police, one group of protesters took to the streets of New York to call for “dead cops.” The family of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen who was fatally shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, is not only against the...

One of this morning’s big news stories is the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Antonio Martin by a policeman in Berkeley, Missouri–a place that, the Associated Press tells us helpfully, is “just a few miles from Ferguson.” The Antonio Martin shooting is currently the top story on Google News, and it is being headlined on pretty much every newspaper’s website. But why? What makes this a major news story? The Michael Brown and Eric Garner stories that preceded it, obviously. But what made them worldwide news? Or, to go back in time, what made the Trayvon Martin case a cause célèbre,...

The New York City group that called for “dead cops” in a widely circulated video is most likely– no joke — the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee (TMOC). In a piece outing “The Monsters Who Screamed For Dead Cops,” The Daily Beast’s Jacob Siegel cites a “web of circumstantial ties” to the group. The man who shot the disturbing video — showing marchers chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” — told Siegel that he saw the group marching with signs reading “No Cops, No Prison.” Siegel produces evidence from Instagram that the TMOC marched...

Evidence from photos, video, social-media posts and interviews suggests it was a single group, desperate to ‘turn up the anger’ at otherwise-peaceful protests.A little over a week ago, a group of people marched down the streets of Manhattan and called for police to be killed. But exactly who cried out for violence has been something of a mystery as New York goes through its most tense moment in more than a decade. Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is...

At a peaceful gathering of the Justice League, they condemned the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos, but also wondered why the slaying of citizens by cops doesn’t spark as much outrage.A modest crowd moved East on 110th Street in New York City on Sunday evening. They walked silently, some carrying Anthora cups illuminated by candlesticks, others holding plastic tea lights handed out by protest organizers. A few carried signs: "IMAGINE JUSTICE," "BLACK LIVES MATTER," "CLAIM HUMANITY." But mostly they just walked, their faces somber, their hands shaking as the snow began to fall. The peaceful vigil was somewhat unexpected,...

Rafael Ramos and Wenjin Liu died because of the campaign to vilify police. Even as the events of Ferguson begin to fade, the campaign it helped engender rolls on, with new reports of demonstrations and protests appearing almost daily. Last week Carol Jackson, a federal judge, restricted police tactics against protestors. (This is kind of odd in and of itself. The last thing people want to hear about during the holidays is some hood getting his comeuppance. The same can be said about Sen. Feinstein’s “torture report” -- waterboarding is not likely to play well during the sleigh bell season....

In an upcoming People magazine interview, Barack and Michelle Obama sit down and discuss life as the First Oppressed Couple of the United States. Hoping to shed light and relate to recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, Barack reached into the upstairs White House bedroom of his mind and called upon his famous imaginary son to make an appearance: The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” President Obama said. “It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for...

A network of businesses, public officials and educators are partnering with the Trayvon Martin Foundation to present “Letters to Trayvon” a holistic campaign to address the plight of Black males and police brutality, next February. The campaign, initiated by the Germantown-based small business Mission Inc., has been in its planning stages for about a year and will include a social media component, youth outreach and a culminating fundraising reception, panel discussion, black art showcase and exhibit on Feb. 28. “Letters to Trayvon is a campaign to end the disrespect and racial profiling of black men and boys [and] it’s a...

In the wake of a New York grand jury deciding not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner, racially diverse protests instantly erupted across the nation. White faces could be seen in swelling crowds from NYC and D.C., to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Denver. Their mouths covered with masking tape with the words "I can't breathe" scrawled over it. The righteousness of racial solidarity burning in their eyes as they joined in chanting, "Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!" This is not to say that there were not White allies...

Their sons -- Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner -- have become symbols of a raging national conversation about police brutality and racial injustice. The mothers of these four unarmed black men and boys felled by bullets or excessive police force have no doubt their sons would still be alive if they were white. No question, they say. "I think absolutely my son's race and the color of his skin had a lot to do with why he was shot and killed," Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Friday. "In all of these cases,...

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, says whites do not understand the protests about the deaths of young black men. CNN's Anderson Cooper cited polls that reveal white people do not view the issue the same way as black people. "It's not happening to them, so they don't quite get it," Fulton told Cooper in an interview that aired Friday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "They don't quite understand. They think that it's a small group of African-Americans that's complaining: 'Oh, what are they complaining about now?'" Cooper asked: "You hear that from people?" "Oh yeah," Fulton said. "The...