Trayvon Martin: A Tragedy provoked by Racial or Class injustice?

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Trayvon Martin’s case, for better or for worse, has fired up the race debate once more in America, and while I think the idea that we live in some post-racial society is naïve and that work still needs to be done for full equality to be achieved, I’m not entirely convinced that race is the most important factor in the tragedy. I would like to suggest that perhaps class and behavioural norms played a greater role in the events that led to young Martin’s death. I do not wish to assert that the not-guilty verdict is faultless (the prosecution botched the case by overcharging Zimmerman, according to some), but neither do I think that Zimmerman deserved a guilty verdict on a second-degree murder charge after I reviewed the facts of the case.

Some media personnel have been fired for misrepresenting the facts of the case for sensationalist purposes, actions which arguably resulted in this case becoming a flash point for the discussion of race in America. NBC in particular aired edited versions of Zimmerman’s call to the police regarding Martin’s “suspicious behaviour,” which included, according to him, cutting behind houses and walking leisurely in the rain. These edits were defamatory and unethical. In one, Zimmerman is heard saying “This guy [Martin] looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something... He's got his hand in his waistband, and he's a black male.” In an even more distorted edit, NBC aired Zimmerman saying “This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black.” The exclusion of the dispatcher asking about the race of the suspicious person made it seem as if Zimmerman racially profiled Zimmerman, as if he had offered information about Martin’s race without solicitation. Zimmerman has launched a defamation suit against NBC for airing this questionable edit.

I would like to draw attention to the reasons for Zimmerman suspecting Martin in the first place, before I offer evidence that contradicts the portrayal of Zimmerman as a racist. Zimmerman’s reasons for calling the police were that Martin was not hurrying in the rain, that he had his hand in his waistband, that he was cutting between houses. On the one hand, we have the police call as hard evidence; on the other, we have Zimmerman’s side of the story. We also have various witnesses’ perspectives. The missing part of the story is Trayvon Martin’s point of view and we must not underestimate this. In an interview granted exclusively to Fox news, Zimmerman said “I felt he was suspicious because it was raining. He was in-between houses, cutting in-between houses, and he was walking very leisurely for the weather. ... It didn't look like he was a resident that went to check their mail and got caught in the rain and was hurrying back home. He didn't look like a fitness fanatic that would train in the rain.” In other words, he was suspicious because his behaviour did not fit any of the moulds of Zimmerman’s expectations. Zimmerman was a Neighbourhood Watch Captain, was studying Criminal Justice, and had been mentored by Sanford police. He had trained in the observation of suspicious behaviour by the police, for whom social norms of propertied people are the standards to which they hold all people. This is the subtext of Zimmerman’s comment about the mail. It did not occur to Zimmerman that Martin was cutting behind houses as a short-cut on a rainy night. It did not occur to him that Martin may not even mind the rain so much, that he may even enjoy it. Why not?

Below I have copy/pasted parts of the transcript of George Zimmerman’s call. I have included what I think is important and at least described what I have excluded. My idea of what is important in this phone call lines up with many others.

Zimmerman: Hey we've had some break-ins in my neighbourhood, and there's a real suspicious guy, uh, Retreat View Circle, um, the best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy is he white, black or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing?

Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He's . . .[unintelligible], he was just staring. . .

Dispatcher: Ok, he's just walking around the area. . .

Zimmerman: . . . looking at all the houses

Dispatcher: Ok.

Zimmerman: Now he's just staring at me.

(some directions given, unimportant)

Zimmerman: Yeah, now he's coming towards me.

Dispatcher: OK

Zimmerman: He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.

Dispatcher: How old would you say he looks?

Zimmerman: He's got button on his shirt, late teens.

Dispatcher: Late teens ok.

Zimmerman: Something's wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is.

Dispatcher: Just let me know if he does anything ok.

Zimmerman: How long until you get an officer over here?

Dispatcher: Yeah  we've got someone on the way, just let me know if this guy does anything else.

Zimmerman: Okay. These assholes they always get away. (gives same directions) Shit he's running.

Dispatcher: He's running? Which way is he running?

Zimmerman: Down towards the other entrance to the neighbourhood.

Dispatcher: Which entrance is that that he's heading towards?

Around this point in the phone call, you hear the car door open.

Zimmerman: The back entrance . . . fucking punks

Dispatcher: Are you following him?

Zimmerman: Yeah

Dispatcher: Ok, we don't need you to do that

Zimmerman: Ok.

The next exchange is about Zimmerman's information (name, address, etc.) Zimmerman says after he's asked his apartment number "It's a home it's 1950, oh crap I don't want to give it all out, I don't know where this kid is."

The rustling noises on the phone, starting when Zimmerman gets out of the car, settle down a little while this exchange happens, but start again near the end of the call, when the two discuss logistics about meeting the dispatched police. Considering the material of the red jacket he wore that night of the confrontation, these rustling noises suggest to me that he stopped walking, then started again.

Before I continue, it should be noted that three weeks before the shooting Zimmerman called the same police line and reported a man looking in the windows of one of the houses in the gated community where the shooting happened. Although the man escaped, a man was arrested four days later in connection with this incident with stolen jewellery and a laptop in his backpack, and Zimmerman identified the man he saw. If I were Zimmerman, I would feel a little more relaxed after that, seeing that perhaps the culprit for the string of burglaries in the neighbourhood had been caught. Rather than relax, however, Zimmerman maintained the same level of hyper-vigilance.

One of the witnesses, who provides us with only a second-hand version of Trayvon’s perspective, said that she was talking on the phone with Trayvon until moments before he was shot, which is borne out by cellular records. She said that Trayvon told her that a “creepy cracker” was staring at him, and then following him. She said that Trayvon had lost the man, but that he had reappeared again. She testified that she told him to hurry to his father’s house in the gated community, where he was staying temporarily, and this is borne out by the fact that Trayvon’s body was found only 64 metres from his father’s home. The witness testified that after the man following Zimmerman reappeared, Trayvon asked Zimmerman “why are you following me” to which Zimmerman responded “what are you doing around here?” The witness said after that she heard the sound of the two scuffling. The credibility of this witness was severely damaged when the defence showed that she lied under oath about being in the hospital on the day of Trayvon’s funeral after they could locate no hospital records. But the question I have, the one that does not depend upon a faulty witness’s testimony, is how Trayvon could have had one hand full with the skittles and fruit drink, talk on the phone with the other hand and “have his hand in his waistband?” In the transcript, Zimmerman says “Something's wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is.” How does Zimmerman not recognize that he’s on the phone, and as such, might be distracted, thus explaining why he’s “looking around?” Of course, Zimmerman’s on the phone, so he’s distracted, too. It was incredibly stupid of him to follow Trayvon, whether or not he is an “A” student. It was also stupid that he didn’t identify himself as a member of the neighbourhood watch to Trayvon. Perhaps the dispatcher should have been more assertive as well in instructing Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon, rather than merely say “we don’t need you to do that.”

Many are saying if Trayvon was white, he’d still be alive. That may be true. Race parity in the jury would certainly have been desirable and just. But the problem with the race argument is that Zimmerman may have earlier attended a City Hall meeting to complain about the former police chief of Sanford and how he handled a case where the son of a police officer beat a black homeless man. The leader of the NAACP broke ranks with black leaders such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson’s call for escalation in protests, perhaps because of the letter he received from a concerned relative of Zimmerman’s. Another problem is that Zimmerman is Hispanic and himself has African-Peruvian heritage. When it comes down to it, Zimmerman’s ungrounded suspicion may have been restricted to the way Trayvon dressed and how he acted. Had Trayvon dressed in a “classier” way, would there have been suspicion? Had he driven to the store for his treats, would he still be alive? A young man died that night, a young man for whom there was no evidence found that he committed any crime the night of the shooting, and justice has yet to be served. I believe the prosecution did a terrible job. I think a charge of manslaughter was more manageable and more just for all those involved.

Sources and Notes: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/25/dershowitz-trayvon-prosecutor-overreached-with-murder-charge/?test=latestnews and http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/second-degree-murder-charge-may-be-hard-to-prove-i/nN26Z/ Some feel that the appointed prosecutor felt media pressure for an exaggerated charge in order to get re-elected. The cutoff date for qualifying to run against State Prosecutor Angela Corey was nine days after the Republican filed charges. For more details on this, consult http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/251911/19/Prosecutor-in-Trayvon-Martin-case-wins-re-eleection
http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2012/04/23/nbc-news-president-network-should-probably-apologize-air-repeated Note, this source may be tendentious because it proclaims itself dedicated to exposing liberal bias in the media. However, NBC employees were fired and/or disciplined over the misleading edits. For more information on this, see http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/wtvj-reporter-fired-for-making-similar-edit-in-george-zimmerman-911-call_b46599
http://thegrio.com/2012/07/18/zimmerman-says-he-was-not-pursuing-trayvon-martin/ Please note that the defense’s decision to grant exclusive rights to the Fox network, known for its conservative bias, strikes me as cynical manipulation. That the Martins hired a publicist to drum up media attention, and the media’s subsequent misbehavior helped no one in this situation.
In none of the seven instances that George Zimmerman called the police did he volunteer the race of the suspicious person until asked by the dispatcher. See http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/05/11045284-in-police-calls-zimmerman-mentioned-race-only-when-asked?lite.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/02/zimmerman-family-member-calls-naacp-racists-says-there-will-be-blood-on-your-hands-if-george-is-hurt/. This story would be easy enough to verify with members of city council. I do not know whether it has been thus verified.
Transcript of George Zimmerman's call to the non-emergency police line:
http://www.motherjones.com/documents/326700-full-transcript-zimmerman
You can listen to this call here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trayvon_Martin

Painting & Film Chapter II: David Cronenberg

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In my imagination, two images have been juxtaposed for a while, conjured by the flights of fickleness engineered by my memory. The one is of the creatures in David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, a stellar adaptation of a very difficult book to translate into film. Leaving issues of faithful adaptation aside, Naked Lunch stands on its own as a film. The level of difficulty in adapting it as a novel is perhaps only equalled by Finnegans Wake and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, the latter of which, if you ask me, would make a better television sit-com than a film. Back to the issue at hand. The other image is Max Ernst's painting Napoleon. I have long harboured the suspicion that the mugwamp creatures in Naked Lunch were modelled on Napoleon's weirdly amphibious face in Napoleon. Today, using my google-fu, I decided to test my suspicion, and I show you the results below.

 Mugwamp from Cronenberg's Naked Lunch

Max Ernst's painting: Napoleon

Result: The faces are similar with folds of skin and flattened nose and lips. Colour is roughly consistent. However, the mugwamp has a more beak-like mouth that is smaller. As well, the painting doesn't feature the variegation that the mugwamp has, and of course the eyes are monochrome. The Napoleon figure in the painting also has more pronounced eye sockets, although the size, shape, and beadiness are quite similar. Conclusion: The production designer or costume designer may have been inspired by Ernst's painting. Here is the description of mugwamps from Burroughs: 

Mugwumps have no liver and nourish themselves exclusively on sweets. Thin, purple-blue lips cover a razor sharp beak of black bone with which they frequently tear each other to shreds in fights over clients. These creatures secrete an addictive fluid through their erect penises which prolongs life by slowing metabolism. (In fact all longevity agents have proved addicting in exact ratio to their effectiveness in prolonging life.)

Well, there you have it. I think the similarities between Cronenberg's mugwamp and Ernst's Napoleon are interesting. It is possible that the production designer or costume designer were more influenced by alien designs of science fiction movies and television series such as Star Trek. Regardless, the similarities for me are interesting enough. Incidentally, the mugwamps were originally Republican candidates who supported Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland because of the corruption of the Republican candidate, and thereafter came to mean a political deserter, or an overly sanctimonious politician who scorned party politics. 

Word Cloud

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All's Quiet on the Rural Front

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It’s All So Quiet
Director: Nanouk Leopold
Writers: Gerbrand Bakker (novel), and Nanouk Leopold (adaptation)
Netherlands, 2013. 

In this spare and understated exploration of the often fraught family relationships of the LGBT community, Helmer, a middle aged man returns home to the family farm to care for his sick father. The LGBT community is mostly a hyper-urban tribe, so a film such as this, that deals with the isolation of rural life in such an honest yet sophisticated manner, is very welcome. Nanouk Leopold narrates this film using suggestion and implication much more than explanation and revelation. As such, the film provokes questions rather than providing answers, closure, and tidy resolution. 

Romantic and carnal opportunities knock on Helmer’s door in the form of a grizzly milk truck driver and a svelte young farmhand. Helmer’s resistance to these advances is puzzling, especially considering one of these men’s affections Helmer so obviously and painfully yearns for. A later conversation between father and son provides some psychological context for Helmer’s romantic angst, but it is up to the viewer to flesh it out. This crucial bit of dialogue also provides context for the direction of Helmer’s affection. 

Helmer’s reticent character is given depth and heft by the admirable facial control of Jeroen Willems. The manner in which we come to know the characters in the film is sometimes indirect. Two men deliver mattresses to the farmhouse; we get a point-of-view shot from Helmer’s perspective of the muddy tracks they left in the kitchen. The film then cuts to Helmer washing the kitchen floor with a rag under his foot. Seeing the ineffectiveness of this technique, he gets down on his hands and knees to scrub. We also learn from Helmer’s neighbor Ada that he painted the kitchen and brightened it up. When Helmer shows the farmhand around, the farmhand asks about a manure machine for the dairy cows. Helmer responds that there is no manure machine, revealing his (and his father’s) Protestant austerity. 

The casting decisions of this film are simply impeccable. Helmer and his father share a very similar body shape, giving their relationship a visible credibility. Wim Opbrouk puts in a nuanced performance as the milkman, Martijn Lakemeier captures the all-or-nothing erotic gusto of youth well, and Lies Visschedijk is a breath of fresh air as Ada, the nearest neighbour. A very curious element of this film is the visual absence of Ada’s husband, and the shots of her, Helmer, and her two sons suggest a surrogate family in the most wholesome tones. The casting of Ada’s sons is great as well, as one of the highlights of the film for me is the sheer beauty of the interaction between the one son and Helmer’s farm animals. I’m sure it is no easy task to find a child so ingenuous and gifted in his rapport with animals. 

It’s All So Quiet also uses symbolism very effectively. If you see it, pay close attention to the semantic weight of the weather and the hooded crow, whose significance is perhaps a nod to Poe’s poem “The Raven.” Or perhaps the poem and the film both draw upon an older folk tale tradition. The cinematography is excellent. The opening shots are gorgeous, and the contrast between beautiful, bright, serene exteriors and gloomy, dark, strained interiors is poignant. This contrast creates a paradoxical tension between Helmer’s emotional claustrophobia and the open fields we associate with rural life. There are some close-ups of Helmer’s father’s face so rich and full of detail that they remind one of the poetry Ingmar Bergman found in the human face. There is one scene of Helmer standing in front of a mirror, looking at his own naked body, perhaps contemplating its inevitable decay, that is so beautifully lit, it reminds one of the chiascuro painting techniques of Caravaggio. The minimal piano score suits the film beautifully and it never feels intrusive or manipulative.   

The one shortcoming of this film is that it leaves too much up to the audience. There is a phone conversation, for example, that is not very well contextualized. The audience is in the dark as to who is on the other side of the conversation, which deals with intimate family matters, and they remain in the dark. Such a strategy for filmmaking, often a conscious resistance to the obvious plots and characters of many Hollywood films, is praiseworthy, but some take it a little too far. Regardless, I would recommend this film for anyone who enjoys arthouse film.     

The Second Coming, Chapter II

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Baal
a ghoul 
holds an awl 
and outside
the owls 
hoot away

the awl's pressure
in wood rests
firm and all's well
that ends oil
in the bottom of the well

sawdust churns onto the floor
an unexpected verb
some rust, a savage sharpening
of stakes
taken to 
you
know
who

crickets chirp
outside a rickety
chair, rocking,
blown by the wind

taken too far
cradle endlessly shaken
in a room overlooking
a lawn

a glass of water waits

and before the awns
are withdrawn on mainstreet
ripples slightly undu
late to the party

hold on 
to your pants
kids.

we're going
to have
a crucifiction.

United Nations Nowhere

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I did this drawing over the Holidays. It is an implausible design for a united nations building. That isn't smoke coming out of the stacks; it is aromatic scents pumped into the urban atmosphere. For an idea of scale, I imagine it about 600 feet tall. Originally I was going to have the pinwheel-like structure in the front be like a windmill to generate power for the building, but I got a little fanciful with it, so now it's just decorative. 

The Rain's Shoreline

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My mother is the sea;
my father is the earth; 
a creature of the shore
I leave my place of birth

in the cobwebs of those who snore
he speaks, addressing no one
in case his words have some worth
open the blessed, oblique door

blank apostrophe of a drunk surf
the rain falls and hides false ore
it returns mother to father; mirth
rises in our smoky din, more

to come, pour it in a torrid form
shimmering waves over the terrain
mud, tracked onto the creaking floor
meeting the barren wood, reclaimed
and creaking under the dingy storm. 

Driftwood winds its way back and forth
treading the shore’s smooth grey stain
like a tango, forward and backwards
arrows unsheathed, shot towards shards

of light, splitting the horizon; aim
the hunter’s only friend, death’s train
stops in the dark, holding tracks hard
to straight lines plodding from a bard’s
mouth, a thread tautens, caught prey

spins out deadly signals, a spider’s name
echoes in the place where cards cut
amongst the music of the door shut
once more, evacuating his refrain. 

The Economic Price of Climate Change

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One notices, after reading scads of material on the environmental movement and its skeptics or opponents, that one of the central conflicts in this debate is the notion that taking care of the environment and economic growth are somehow incompatible. This debate, if we accept the premise of the environmental movement – that our bloated consumption practices will lead to the untimely demise of much of the life on earth currently – is arguably the most crucial debate of all. In this push and pull between those who privilege the economy and those who value other species, the health of the oceans and the atmosphere above all else, it becomes difficult to sort out fact from convenient fiction and truth from  falsehood. Mind you, we must take into account that this debate will take different forms, strategies, and approaches depending on where it takes place. In Canada, the primary argument against investing in research and development for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar is that it is not economical. This is a knee-jerk response that is taken as self-evident truth among many people.

Let’s examine what is behind this claim, and the abundant facts that contradict it. Canada, through a rather arbitrary turn of events, happens to have incredibly large reserves of petroleum, locked up in “tar sands.” Make no bones about it, this is the dirtiest form of extracting petroleum on the books right now, except maybe for Venezuelan heavy crude. However, the depression in 2008 hit, and the economy became a grave concern; we can’t afford to not develop the tar sands became the argument of choice. As an exploitable resource for the most important commodity in the world, our oil reserves make for a very compelling reason for Canada to want to disregard the simple fact that extracting petroleum from tar sands is relatively speaking, very dirty and not very efficient. Thus, the Conservative government in Canada spent oodles of taxpayer money for commercials attesting to the environmental safety of the tar sands. You can fool some people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. But, in a representative democracy like Canada, where a political party can earn a majority of parliamentary seats in the House of Commons with about 25%   (this is a generous estimate) of the total vote, fooling enough of the people turns out to be quite easy and efficient. There is a long line of psychological research that suggests that the more you repeat something, the more the listener will tend to regard it as true, regardless of whether the statement or claim made is true or not.

Granted, there must be some reasonable Conservatives that concede that the tar sands aren’t the cleanest manner of oil extraction, but still maintain the priority of the economy. This is a statement you can’t really oppose. I would be more willing to accept their argument that we can’t afford not to develop the oil sands if it was actually benefitting Canadians. Here I must concede that the tar sands boom has done well for Alberta. However, because Mr. Mulroney privatized Petro-Canada in 1991, the potential benefits to the rest of Canada are slim indeed. After all, Sinecorp and Exxon/Mobil are the main developers of the sands, and they are a Chinese and an American company. To find evidence of this lack of benefit for ordinary Canadians, one simply needs to look at the price of gas at the pump. We are in the top ten producers of oil, and yet we still pay more on average than Americans do for gas. While it is true that we don’t have the refining capacity to turn crude oil into gasoline, and thus incur the costs of shipping it to and from refineries, nothing (that I know of at least) has been done to build refining capacity so that our advantage in oil production would actually benefit Canadians at the pump.

Let us now address the contention that renewable energy sources are not “economical.” Denmark has pledged to produce 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050. It already has considerable renewable energy production capabilities. It also has much less unemployment than Canada – nearly half as much less in 2009, a quarter as much less in 2010. Furthermore, Denmark’s youth   unemployment rate was 11.2 % , while Canada’s was 15.3% in 2012. Somehow, Denmark seems to be economically robust while investing in renewable energies. Also, Germany the economic powerhouse of the EU broke records last year by producing 50% of their energy from renewable sources on peak days. Both its general unemployment and youth unemployment rate are lower than Canada’s. Most importantly, both Denmark and Germany’s governments have run much smaller deficits than the Conservative government despite the economic instabilities in the EU. I must be missing something here, because these two paragons of renewable energy seem to be thriving, economically speaking.

Finally, I would like to introduce an issue I have not seen addressed by either side of this ongoing debate, which is the economic damage precipitated by climate change. Climate change has become the rallying cry of the environmental movement. 2012 is sizing up to be the hottest year on record in the Toronto region, and many others as well. Despite the boatloads of evidence supporting the climate change hypothesis, some still deny it. Others admit it exists, but matters little because the world is ending, whatever that means. I hypothesize that increasing  temperatures decrease productivity. Certainly, many places have air conditioning, but this itself is a very energy-intensive technology and will put further strains on the energy sector (these are well-documented and self-evident). Because much of the energy sector depends upon fossil fuels, this in turn increases the rate at which the earth’s climate changes. Also, not all places have air conditioning, and productivity in these places, usually small to medium sized businesses, will suffer in summer heat waves. This argument, mind you, must take into consideration that warmer winters could alternatively see an increase in productivity to balance the concomitant decrease in the summer. However, is there any greater stimulus to activity than a slight chill in the air? These hypotheses need testing, though, which is unlikely to happen in the current political climate of economic cuts for research and development, and a stimulus plan that focuses almost entirely on construction (not all of it even necessary, at that).

The Dead Don't Argue

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The End of the Line

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