So here are two things we don’t need in the raging Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman controversy. Input from fringe groups, and comparisons to other cases that don’t apply. But don’t worry, we’re getting both. The most prominent fringe group to weigh in on the Martin-Zimmerman matter is the New Black Panther Party. When I call these folks a “fringe group,” believe me, I’m being way too kind.
The NBPP, as the organization is called, has offered a $10,000 bounty for the capture of Zimmerman, who has admitted that he fatally shot Martin the night of Feb. 26 in a Sanford, Fla., gated community. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the major newspaper closest to the insanity swirling around Sanford, Mikhail Muhammad, an NBPP spokesman, announced the bounty at a rally last Saturday.
A Sentinel reporter then asked Muhammad the obvious question: Wasn’t the call for a bounty an incitement to more violence? Here’s Muhammad’s answer: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
That answer, as you can well imagine, went over like ham hocks in a kosher restaurant with Sanford city officials. The Sentinel ran a statement from them: “The city is requesting calm and no vigilante justice. Attempts by civilians to take any person into custody may result in criminal charges or unnecessary violence.”
So NOW they’re against vigilante justice? They probably would not be in this mess had they driven that point home to Zimmerman. Well, better late than never.
Back to Muhammad and his NBPP cohorts: CNN reporter Anderson Cooper did an interview with Muhammad and tried to reason with him. I’m betting, after he was done, Cooper felt as if he’d just rolled the dice with his sanity and come up snake eyes.
“He committed murder, he committed a hate crime,” Muhammad said of Zimmerman. “We decided to take it upon ourselves and coalition with other groups, with other black people who have had enough.” At this point you have to feel kind of embarrassed for Muhammad. Does the man not know that the word “coalition” is a noun?
There is one good thing, and one good thing only, that can be said about the NBPP: Its members leave me pining for the original Black Panther Party. They were no day at the beach either, but I do recall that BPP members rejected — and attacked — black racism as vehemently as they did white racism. These days, you can’t find the so-called black leader who’ll even concede that black racism exists.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, original BPP members reject the NBPP, which “is a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization whose leaders have encouraged violence against whites, Jews and law enforcement officers.” The SPLC could have added that it was an NBPP member who called President Obama the “N” word.
Not quite as bad as NBPP members are those who want to compare Zimmerman to black men who are perceived victims of injustice. I don’t log on to my Facebook account often, but I did find one post that compared Zimmerman to executed Georgia inmate Troy Davis.
“American justice” the post read. “Troy Davis, executed. George Zimmerman, free.” Where even to start with this one? Davis was executed after being tried and found guilty of felony murder. If and when Zimmerman is arrested, he won’t be charged with anything close to felony murder.
Davis’ supporters pointed to the prosecution witnesses who recanted their testimony against him, conveniently forgetting the judge who went over all those recantations and found them lacking.
Long story short: Zimmerman might not be innocent, but you can bet Troy Davis wasn’t either.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
