By Alan Bean
FRIENDS OF JUSTICE: “We prosecute cases based on the relevant facts of each case and on the law of the state of Florida.” So says State Attorney Angela B. Corey, the special prosecutor assigned to the George Zimmerman case. It is unlikely that Zimmerman would ever have been charged had it not been for the national outcry that has rivetted attention on this case.
Law enforcement and district attorneys dislike the Stand Your Ground law because it frustrates their efforts to arrest, investigate and prosecute cases in which the shooter claims self-defense. But law enforcement was obviously intimidated by Stand Your Ground. Even though Zimmerman jumped to unwarranted conclusions about Trayvon Martin, even though he defied a police dispatcher’s demand that he remain in his vehicle, even though Zimmerman clearly followed and confronted Martin, the appeal to self-defense worked like magic.
Like any high-profile narrative, the Trayvon Martin case has revealed a troubling divide in public perception. On one side of the fault line, people identify with George Zimmerman’s suspicion of young black males wearing hoodies. On the other side, folks identify with a victim of racial profiling and vigilante justice.
Those who identify with neither Zimmerman nor Martin generally take a “let the system handle it approach.” Now that Zimmerman has been arrested it may appear that the dispassionate bystanders who trust established judicial processes called it right. The Washington Post editorial below suggests, albeit cautiously, that the system is working as it should. Zimmerman will have his day in court. Prosecutors will have a hard time working around the prejudicial impact of the Stand Your Ground law. A plea bargain may settle this thing. Zimmerman’s mental issues may also surface as a major issue (the man is clearly unstable).
But none of this would be happening apart from massive national protest.
In a related development, a growing list of corporations is cutting their ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in response to revelations that the conservative organization was knee-deep in drafting the legislation that created Stand Your Ground laws in Florida and several other states. According to the Center for Media and Democracy:
This announcement comes in light of a recent controversy surrounding ALEC’s link to Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which may protect the killer of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, and ALEC’s association with voter ID laws and other extreme legislative proposals. McDonalds, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Intuit have all announced within the past week that they have decided to not renew their membership with ALEC and the Gates Foundation has announced it will not continue to fund ALEC.
ALEC uses contributions from corporations to draft conservative, business-friendly legislation. What the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was doing in bed with such a rabidly partisan organization is difficult to discern. According to the ALEC website, the Gates Foundation contributed $376, 635 to ALEC ”to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement.”
In other words, Gates was backing the fight to undermine public education. Although the Gates’ contribution to ALEC is completely unrelated to Stand Your Ground, the Foundation apparently reconsidered its association with an organization that has both feet planted on the conservative side of the culture war. That’s not how Bill and Melinda want us to think of them.
All of this demonstrates the messy power of narrative. Narratives like the Trayvon Martin story are difficult to control once released into the world. They are effective, however, because as Walter Fisher has observed, narrative, not logic, drives our thinking and doing.
