Trayvon Martin: Let It Rest

Personally, I thought George Zimmerman was guilty of some degree of homicide. Not first degree: he did not deliberately set out to target Trayvon Martin with malice aforethought and intent to kill. Not second degree: when he shot Trayvon, he did not shoot with malice. But it wasn't justified self defence either: you don't get to pick a fight with someone, then when the fight goes against you, pull out a gun and kill, and claim "self-defence." If George Zimmerman had stayed in his truck, Trayvon Martin would be alive today.

I do not believe the jury that found George Zimmerman not guilty of all charges was primarily motivated by racism, and I cannot know with certainty that it was motivated at all by racism. Credible accounts that Martin had Zimmerman pinned to the ground, and Zimmerman feared for his own safety are quite enough to explain the jury's verdict.

I wasn't in the court room, and I didn't hear all the evidence. Like most people, I had to sort through what was pumped out in the media, generally with a lot of overlay by people who were either pumping for Zimmerman as a poster boy for something or other, or were demanding that he be convicted. I tried to get the best picture I could, but only the jury heard it all.

The best sense I got is that two people were each afraid the other was up to no good, and lashed out in what they perceived to be self-defense. Zimmerman thought he was following a potential burglar, and he was wrong. Martin thought a crazy man was following him with intent to assault, rob, or otherwise harm him, and he wasn't quite right about that either. Based on a video that's been posted, it is obvious why Martin might have found Zimmerman's behavior bizzare and threatening. Martin probably felt 'this guy's following me down the street on a dark rainy night, driving past me, then stopping, watching me, following me around the corner and around a bend, then getting out of his vehicle and following me.' Zimmerman thought Martin was acting bizarre when Martin ducked out of sight for fear of Zimmerman.

Zimmerman thought it odd that Martin was looking at him. Martin thought it odd that Zimmerman was looking at him. At some point, Martin thought the best way to insure his own safety was to incapacitate this creepy guy following him. That was overkill. So Martin turned on Zimmerman, quite possibly intending to render him unconscious, and Zimmerman, who found that understandably threatening, pulled out a gun and shot Martin.

Nobody who has had a friend or relation in prison, or worked with families who did, could fail to have some sympathy for Zimmerman's parents and wife, and even Zimmerman himself. He believed he was doing the right thing. He really did. But killing someone, in the honest and unreasonable belief that someone poses a danger, is a crime, albeit less than murder. The hard part is, Zimmerman had a reasonable belief that Martin was doing great bodily harm to him at the time he fired. What he did not have was a reasonable basis to behave in the bizarre fashion that led Martin to believe Zimmerman was posing a danger to Martin.

Apparently the jury found Zimmerman's injuries established a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of any degree of criminal homicide. But the fact remains, Zimmerman began the chain of circumstances that ended with Zimmerman shooting Martin. Zimmerman made a faulty assumption about Martin, and acted on it. It is dangerous for people who jump to conclusions to be following other people on dark rainy nights. It is even more dangerous for such people to be carrying weapons. We need protection from people who do what George Zimmerman did. A conviction would have provided a bit of that protection.

Trials are not held to provide the community with catharsis. The jury has a specific duty NOT to respond to any organized body of opinion that Zimmerman should or should not be convicted. They heard all the evidence, and did what seemed to them the best they could do. They clearly weren't happy with it. Even if the evidence was clear and convincing, they had to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict.

Zimmerman does come across as a creepy guy. Hopefully he will at least have learned to stay home and stop acting like Superman. The verdict cannot be satisfying to Martin's family, but the fact that there was a trial was a victory. Zimmerman did not get to walk after a routine dismissal by police. He had to face detailed testimony, and the entire matter was examined and sifted. That is a bit more than nothing. Let it rest.

Emory President is right about "three-fifths compromise" ... for what it's worth

James W. Wagner, the president of Emory University, has stirred up a storm by referring to the "three-fifths compromise," in drafting the federal constitution in 1787, as an example of how polarized people could find common ground. Students have marched on campus denouncing racism and calling for Wagner's resignation. Wagner himself has called it a clumsy and regrettable mistake.

The "three-fifths compromise" was an agreement that in figuring out how many seats a state was entitled to in the federal congress, the whole number of free persons and three fifths of the whole number of "all other Persons," an embarrassed euphemism for people of African descent - by and large enslaved, would be counted. Whatever else this may have been, it was in fact an example of how polarized people could find common ground.

What they were polarized about was not the humanity of people from Africa. They weren't even thinking about that. Contrary to common myth, the Framers of our federal constitution did not agree that Americans of African descent were 3/5 of a human being each, or that a person of African descent was 3/5 the value of a "white man."

The "three-fifths compromise" was strictly a power play between states, over which states would carry how much weight in the federal legislature. Everyone was agreed that the House of Representatives would be based on population. It would be a mistake to even say that "universal manhood suffrage" or "free white males" was the basis of representation.

Who would have the right to vote in congressional elections? Those in each state who "shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature." In most states, that involved some minimum value of property ownership. Not everyone could vote, but the entire "free" population was counted in figuring how many representatives a state could elect.

Large numbers of non-voting free people who didn't own much property would nonetheless be counted in the census and add to the number of representatives in a state's delegation. Since enslaved persons were legally chattel property, could they be counted? Northern delegates said, if you count your slaves, then we should be able to count our mules, horses, and cattle. Are they men? If so, let them vote.

(That would have been a hollow bit of humanitarian sentiment, since even as men, or women, they would own enough property to vote. But the sentiment was not humanitarian, it was about power, distributed among states, governed by a minority of even the "free white male" inhabitants.)

Essentially, the northern delegates said slaves should count for zero, and southern delegates said slaves should count one hundred percent. Did the northern delegates thus set the value of Africans lower than the southern delegates did? Nope, they were all just trying to increase their own balance of power, at the expense of the rest.

So, taking the compromise as what it really was, settling a dispute about which property owning free white men should have how much power in the new government, it was indeed a pragmatic half-victory that "kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together."

Leslie Harris, a professor of history at the school, responded, "The three-fifths compromise is one of the greatest failed compromises in U.S. history.” She elucidated that “Its goal was to keep the union together, but the Civil War broke out anyway."

Indeed it did. But it would be quite accurate to say that it was the three-fifths compromise that made possible the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.

If no compromise had been reached, the southern states would have gone their own way, two, perhaps three confederacies would have formed along the Atlantic seaboard. New York and Rhode Island might have stayed out of any confederation. Virginia would have retained its claims to the entire northwest. There probably would have been no Northwest Ordinance, keeping slavery out of the states north of the Ohio River.

But, because the three-fifths compromise allowed the formation of one nation, it was possible four score and seven years later to insist that it remain one nation. When a band of men who had a large chunk of their capital invested in enslaved human beings tried to lead their states into secession from the union, there were others (south as well as north) who said, no, you can't do that. The end result, intended by almost nobody, was the end of slavery.

Which brings the gentle reader back to Wagner's original point: there are men and women in congress today who declare an unshakable commitment to be guided only by the language of the United States Constitution, and never to compromise their ideals. These men and women are ignorant of the process by which the constitution was written and ratified. These men and women are speaking out of both sides of their mouths, because the constitution was in fact the product of compromising principles.

Compromise almost always means compromising principles, because the people on the other side of the table also have principles, which is why there are differences to be compromised.

There are other good examples to draw on. Joe Slovo, a leader of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress, was asked why the ANC's complete program (which included nationalization of all mines and natural resources) had not been implemented after Nelson Mandela was elected president. He replied, because we didn't win. The compromise between F.W. De Klerk and Nelson Mandela recognized that neither side had the power to vanquish the other. They could continue a low-level conflict for decades, or compromise. The compromise has indeed been messy and disappointing to just about everyone.

Likewise, when William F. Buckley, Jr. and S.I. Hayakawa were discussing the Panama Canal, Hayakawa said you don't negotiate from a position of weakness. Buckely astutely responded, of course you do. If you have the upper hand, and can have it all your way, you have no reason to negotiate. You only negotiate when you cannot get everything your own way.

Wagner's explanation to readers who found fault with his original column therefore remains quite appropriate to consider:

"We see these truths in hindsight. In retrospect we can fairly ask ourselves, would we have voted for the Constitution—for a new nation, for “a more perfect union”—if it meant including the three fifths compromise? Or would we have voted no—that is, voted not to undertake what I hope we see as a noble experiment, however flawed and imperfect it has been? Would the alternative have been a fractured continent, a portion of which might have continued far longer as an economy built on the enslavement of human beings? We don’t know; nor could our founders know.

"The ends do not in themselves justify any means necessary to achieve them. My essay did not suggest that. But without a struggle to find a way through to our higher purpose, we may be left with far more damaging circumstances than what our light calls us toward. Inevitably, our existence as human beings is a compromised existence, never pure. Unless we recognize that with humility and mutual charity, we will always remain polarized."

For the Cubs... for Gary Fouse... for Common Ground

There's not much I agree on with Gary Fouse. He often writes like one of the last unreconstructed Orange County, California conservatives, updated to the 21st century. (One of the updates is Gary adores Jews and will do anything to support Israel, the exact opposite of traditional American conservatism. Fifty years ago, only liberals and socialists accepted Jews or supported Israel.)

But one thing we agree on is the Chicago Cubs. We're both Cubs fans, me from the midwest, Gary from California. There are other teams between Lake Michigan and the Pacific Ocean we could support... but we love the Cubs.

I had a chance to take these pictures from the southbound Red Line train, just before and after it pulled into the Addison Street "El" station. (That's elevated for all you University of California - Santa Cruz community studies majors.)

Wrigley Field is one of the last stadiums where you can watch the game from the roof tops of the surrounding neighborhood.

Its a little known fact that the hypothetical curse upon the Cubs some 100 years or so ago had a corollary, a way out. Think of this in terms of how it would have sounded circa 1910.

"The Cubs will win the World Series when a black man is twice elected President of the United States." See how things change? It's gonna happen...