Also same with POC images shown on news reports more often with mug shots, when white folks’ images are of them surrounded by a smiling family at home.
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I read your sarcasm as implying that’s what I was trying to say. If I misread, I apologize.
So what’s the solution? I’m honestly interested in your thoughts on this. I completely agree that the system frequently fails to meet the ideal and that those failures far too often harm people of color. I’m not ignoring that. I just don’t believe that lowering the standard for Rittenhouse will do anything to help fix the problem (however much it might make us all feel better to see the POS go to jail).
That said, there is a reasonable case to be made that the jury is not getting all the evidence they should, and that he’s getting an unfair advantage. That shouldn’t happen either, and I’m well aware that it would be far less likely to happen if he were black. From what I hear from people who understand the law far better than me, however, it’s not clear cut that the judge should be allowing that evidence in.
It’s not “lowering the standard” for Rittenhouse. It’s maintaining a consistent standard across all defendants. If the court was applying a consistent standard to Rittenhouse, they would call bs on his patently made-up excuse that he shot people because he was afraid of them. He shot them because that’s exactly what he said he was going to Kenosha to do.
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I’m not sure it’s on me to give you a solution to a centuries old problem that was built for my benefit because of my race (but not my gender).
At the very least, we should stop pretending like judges like this have any interest in justice, as opposed to letting white kids get off for shooting anti-racist protesters.
As I said, we need to reform all our systems top to bottom to root out racism, misogyny, etc, and to deliver justice to everyone, not just white men.
Reform policing, reform education (end school to prison pipeline, more power to teachers, better pay, smaller classes, smaller schools, wrap around services, etc), reform the legal system by eliminating laws that are racist in either intent or outcome.
A taxation system that redistributes wealth, rebuilds working class communities, provides services we all need, that centers humanity and the environment over wealth and privilege - this includes a college education or whatever training people would like for a career.
End imperialism abroad and at home.
Pass the ERA. Have real consequences for acts of prejudice against POC, women, LGBQT+, etc.
But, honestly, if you think that I should have all the solutions to hand you on a silver platter, then you really don’t understand how a society works. No one individual can solve these problems which have been built up over centuries and continue to haunt us today. And it’s complete and utter BULLSHIT that we can’t fix this stuff. We can. We live in a world that is vastly different than it was over 500 years ago, even from 150 years ago. We can change shit again, but a few are enriching themselves off the back of the rest of us, and those people have a strangle hold on our systems of government. None of this gets fixed until the rest of us demand it…
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If there were any easy answers, we’d be talking about something else.
Bingo.
“If you’re White you’re alright,
But if you’re Brown, turn around,
And if you’re Black, get back.”
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Right? We’re talking about changing hundreds of years of developments in variety of different political, social, and legal structures that are interdependent and complex. But I’m meant to know the answers to that if I’m to be taken seriously…
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Here he is explaining that he does not know how to save texts so he screenshots them and emails them to himself and then he pinch zooms and it’s a blur. He just made the prosecution’s point. When you zoom Apple does not add pixels to make an image more viewable.
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I care less that he has a hard time with technology and am more concerned that he seems to be a Trumpist willing to let Rittenhouse go free because he feels like the people he shot “deserve it”…
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“The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.” -Ambassador Kosh
Win or lose, it already is. It is just relatively quiet right now.
Just wait for the midterms… especially if the 1/6 Treason Committee draws real blood beforehand.
And when You Know Who gets back into office, it will be legal.
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Why doesn’t the judge just end the trial, give the kid the key to the city and take him out to dinner?
He dismissed the underage in possession charge.
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Well it appears that the judge just threw out the weapons charge, so I can’t see any charge sticking now.
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The jury still might give the judge the finger and convict on murder. It’s happened before.
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Actually it keeps the jury from convicting on a misdemeanor charge when there are major felonies at stake here. It may increase the chance of conviction.
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At the risk of derailing, I don’t think that’s going to happen
but history suggests some other Republican will end up in the White House after Biden’s second term is over—Democrats haven’t gotten a third consecutive term since the 1940s
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but he also gave instructions to the jury that they could charge on lesser offenses. which seems like he’s giving them a chance to split the difference: which in this case seems like it protects the defendant
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Small point-of-fact, the AR-15 never left Wisconsin. Rittenhouse’s sister’s boyfriend lived in Kenosha, bought the thing for him, and it just was kept on that side of the state line.
The New Yorker piece from July goes into detail on this.
Not intended to be a comment on any other legal aspect of the case. Personal opinion is that the man should be found guilty of some things beyond just not being legally entitled to own use or carry such a gun. And his being made into a right-wing cause celebre over the thing is stomach-turning.
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thank you for posting, but I don’t expect any jury in this country to be able to parse that.
this MF is gonna get off and the whole country will be the worse off for it.
I hope you are right.
Biden’s second term?
You are a hell of a lot more optomistic than I am. But again, I hope you are right.
Well, we shall see how it turns out.
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The testimony in this trial is that since being purchased in Wisconsin the defendant’s AR-15 never left Wisconsin. I don’t remember where it was supposed to have been stored, maybe at the defendant’s father’s house in Kenosha. It would have been illegal for the defendant to have the weapon in Illinois.
His over 18 YO “friend” that purchased it for him is facing charges.
The state gun charge was dismissed today before being sent to the jury.
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