Mediaboss Marketing

Mt. Pleasant Church. Photo: Paola Chinchilla, WMFE

Part 3 of a 3-part series

The Black church has played a long time role in organizing and supporting the Civil Rights Movement: from Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to a networking system to encourage disenfranchised Black people to vote and join activist groups. The church continues to play a vital role as a focal point for activism today.

WMFEs Talia Blake spoke to Rev. Robert Spooney of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church to talk about the churchs place in modern civil rights movements.

Not every act pushing for equality is as highly visible as a sit-in or protest. Sometimes, it is as simple as being heard.

When the powers that be decided to bring a downtown campus of UCF and Valencia into Parramore, we reached out to them and said, If youre coming, I do believe in growth, but we need to make sure that residents choose to take advantage of these opportunities, have the opportunity to do so, says Rev. Spooney.

I dont want any doors closed, any windows shut. And so out of that, those particular conversations, we now have the Paramore Community Engagement Council, which represents the District of Parramore if you will, as an arm, if you will, to the those two institutions, looking at education, housing, safety, jobs, and employment, and health and welfare, making sure that any resources that come from those entities will be shared unilaterally with the community, and thats what we do.

Rev. Randolph Bracy agrees with Spooney. He says the church has continued to be active in the movement for equality, it just may not have been visible to everyone. He says if it werent for the Black Church we would not have had our first black president in 2009.

He points to a visit from then candidate Barack Obama, who told a group of black preachers that the I-4 vote would help him win the state of Florida.

They saw the power of the Black church, says Bracy.

It was Black ministers. Dont fool yourself now. Oh, there were other elements that work in conjunction, but it was the Black church, Black preachers who turned out that force and moving from Tampa, St. Pete, coming back to Lakeland and Polk County to Orange County in Orlando. All the way to Daytona, says Bracy.

And guess what? He became president. And so that tells me beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was the Black church that made the difference in the election.

Orlando area Black churches have continued to be a location for registering voters, and in 2012, they also began to serve as meeting places for what would become the Black Lives Matter movement.

On February 26th, 2012, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, just north of Orlando, while walking home from a convenience store. In the weeks after Martins death, amid a growing chorus of calls for an arrest in the case, the NAACP held a meeting at the citys Allen Chapel AME Church.

The pastor at the time, Valerie J. Houston, lead a prayer at the meeting, calling for justice, and an end of discrimination and racism.

State Rep. Geraldine Thompson spoke to the public as well, promising to seek justice. She explains why the church was an important setting for the meeting.

Well, I think because a lot of us are very comfortable in a church environment. And theres trust in the people who are in leadership there, that the church still plays a very critical role.

That meeting that youre talking about that occurred in Sanford is a meeting where I spoke, I was asked by the Seminole County branch of the NAACP, to come to Sanford. And this is before the president, the national president, Ben Jealous of the NAACP got there. And so I went to talk about the laws in the state of Florida.And so its still the church, where we congregate, to talk about issues like that, when hotels and other places are not open. The church opens its doors, she concluded.

Efforts by Thompson and other lawmakers that year and subsequently to repeal Stand Your Ground- failed. Eventually an arrest was made in the shooting. George Zimmerman was found not guilty at his high-profile trial in 2013 on second degree murder and manslaughter charges.

But the Trayvon Martin case reinforced the importance of the church- just as it had in the 60s- as a focal point for the Black community to gather and organize in a moment of crisis.

Thompson says Black churches are still a great tool for helping distribute resources. She says she recently called attention to the unequal rate of access for the COVID-19 vaccine for African American populations compared to white affluent areas. When the Department of Emergency Management contacted her to help correct the issue, Black churches were the best way to go. Thompson says she was able to have 500 doses of the vaccine administered at Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church.

And Rev. Randolph Bracy Jr. says the fight for civil rights continues.

Weve got to redouble our efforts in light of what is happening right now in our various state legislatures, says Bracy. We see all kinds of things that are reactions to stop us from where were going, and so I think, Im not going to be redundant, but I just think if the fight is a long ways from it. And the Black church has to be doubly on top of it.

The Black Church has always been a driving force for black empowerment since its creation during the time of slavery And while the civil rights movement of today is different from the movement of the 1950s and 60s, one thing that will never change is the support and empowerment the Black Church gives its people.

<< Back to Part 2 of this series

<< Back to Part 1 of this series

Support for Black Churches In Orlando comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Continued here:
Black Churches in Orlando: Black Lives Matter | 90.7 WMFE - WMFE

Every February since 1976, Americans have celebrated Black History month to salute the historical achievements of Black Americans. Over the years, the month-long celebration has changed a bit, from showcasing the resilience and contributions of long-gone Black Americans such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King and Chester Morris to acknowledging the trauma and racism faced by blacks today.

Movements like Black Lives Matter have risen from this sentiment, reflecting on the continued struggle for racial justice and advocating for an end to systemic racism in America. For many Americans, the Black Lives Matter movement, founded, nearly eight years ago, has become the political, spiritual and cultural peak of the unheard. Last summer, it was behind roiling street demonstrations that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and demanded accountability within and outside of the civil rights community. BLM has been arguably one of the biggest shapers of politics over the past year.

But where is the movement headed and how will it evolve as a political force? NYCity Lens spoke with some of the movements founders to find out.

(Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

The power of Black Lives Matter has been about being able to both be a protest movement and a movement thats deeply involved in politics, Alicia Garza, one of the movements co-founders, told NY City Lens in a phone interview.

Garza, along with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, founded Black Lives Matter in July 2013 to combat violence and systemic racism following the acquittal in July 2013 of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin after a brief altercation in Sanford, Florida.

Last summer, however, Black Lives Matter became a household phrase globally, following the killings of George Floyd , Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Corporations and elected officials begun to understand why the term Black Lives Matter is necessary, and Black Lives Matter murals began popping up in all corners of the globe. Demonstrations extended to more than 60 countries and six continents to protest the killings of Black people in America. In January, the movement was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

We are proud to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize award. The world is recognizing our contribution to promoting Human rights and racial Justice, said Opal Tometi, another one of the founders of BLM in an interview.

While BLM has become a voice for Black liberation worldwide, here at home, it has also sparked a backlash from conservatives and extremists on the far right. Former President Donald Trump called the Black Lives Matter a symbol of hate.

Black Lives Matter movement is part of a mob rule that is destroying many Black lives, Trump said in June 2020 at a White House press conference.

BLMs founders say that Trumps rhetoric is baseless as BLM doesnt stand for hate. They have asked Trump to restrain from using his clout to taint the image of the movement, even now that he is out of office.

This rhetoric unfortunately has been brewing for many, many years. It is important for us to know that we did not get here over night. We know the rhetoric that Donald Trump continues to share using his platform and using the office of the presidency was in fact backed up with actions, said Tometi. I am so glad that he is no longer the president of this country. s

With the election of President Joseph Biden, many activists have noted that the movement can start to breathe easy. They point to the new presidents efforts to diversify his cabinet and to his choice for vice president, Kamala Harris, the first Black and Indian American woman to be elected to national office.

But, Tometi says, now, is not the time to relax.

We see the divergent conversations happening about Black Lives Matter, by and large, after the election of Vice President Kamala Harris, a black woman, but the majority of people need to understand that we are a robust and necessary human rights movement and we are tired of the demonization of Black Lives, said Tometi.

She added that she has hope in the Biden administration and is pushing for the introduction of laws that will protect the black community in America. Vice President Harris and the election of Cory Bush, who became the first Black woman to represent Missouri in the House of Representative both represent historical and landmark accomplishments, BLMs leaders say.

But they also want Americans to acknowledge the ways that young Black activists and organizers have moved from organizing Black Lives Matter demonstrations to taking on roles of political leadership on a grand scale.

What we need to do now is harness that goodwill and harness the popular energy and make sure that its enshrined into law, said Tometi. We need a lot of policies that are for black lives.

More here:
The Future of Black Lives Matter - NY City Lens

After the November election last year, the national coordinating group of Republican state attorneys general boasted about the success of its aggressive advertising and media campaign against Democrats. The group had used incidents of violence that occurred alongside massive peaceful protests of police killings of unarmed Black men to portray Democrats as "lawless liberals" who "want to burn America."

"Our five-month Lawless Liberals campaign earned millions of impressions" and "emphasized that the Republican AGs are America's strongest defenders of economic freedom, defending the nation from threats of socialism, chaos, and lawlessness," the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) wrote in its press release.

RAGA'scampaign produced at least 17 videos and a website that grossly exaggerated the degree of violence and distorted the positions of Democratic candidates to inspire fear among voters whom they hoped would give Donald Trump a second term as president and vote for other Republicans down the ballot.

As RAGA cynically manipulated the nation's racial strife for political gain, it ignored a very real domestic threat that was snowballing across America. Far-right, violent extremism had been on the rise during the whole Trump administration, and increasing tensions associated with the upcoming elections put the threat into overdrive. Despite attempts by the Trump administration to cover up that threat and inflate the dangers posed by antifascists, anarchistsand BLM protesters, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that "white supremacist extremists" posed the "most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland" in its October 2020 threat assessment.

In August, a right-wing police fan and Trump supporter, Kyle Rittenhouse, drove across state lines into Kenosha, Wisconsin, allegedly to protect businesses during a Black Lives Matter protest there. He killed two protesters and injured a third.

But none of that fazed RAGA, which continued to pin violence solely on Black Lives Matter protesters and antifa, the loose network of activistswho work to oppose fascism.

After Trump lost the election, at least 17 Republican attorneys general joined the lame-duck president in disputing the election results. RAGA's nonprofit affiliate, the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), helped plan the Jan. 6 rally and march that culminated in the pro-Trump insurrection at the Capitol that left five dead, including one Capitol Police officer.

Despite its extensive role in the day's events, RAGA immediately issued a statement praising "the right of Americans to peacefully protest" while condemning "the violence, destruction, and rampant lawlessness occurring at the U.S. Capitol" the same position leading Democrats took on last summer's unrest that RAGA deliberately misrepresented for its own political purposes.

The group's ironic statement from November "RAGA has repeatedly warned that the violence being perpetrated by Democrats would continue even after the Presidential Election" remains online.

Racist fear-mongering is nothing new for the GOP, but over the last six years, Trump became the clear ringleader. Since beginning his first campaign in 2015 with a speech claiming that Mexicans were rapists and drug smugglers, the ex-president's political record was defined by numerous racist statements and actions.

Early in the administration, Trump issued the ban on immigration from majority-Muslim countries (known as the "Muslim ban") and deliberately separated immigrant families. Hundreds or possibly thousands of children are still isolated from their parents, and the Biden administration's effort to reunify the families will be a challenge.

Throughout a term marked by Hatch Act violations, profiteering off the presidencyand potentially criminal attempts to work with a foreign power to swing the 2020 election, Trump tried to label people of color, and those who support their basic human rights, as criminals. He created an office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to highlight crimes committed by immigrants. He falsely characterized the districts represented by Black Democrats, such as the late John Lewis of Georgia or Rep. Ihan Omar of Minnesota, as "crime infested." And he repeatedly circulated videos of random incidents of Black men attacking white people, echoing the "black-on-white crime" myth beloved by white nationalists, including mass murdererDylann Roof.

For years, neo-Nazis and other white nationalists celebrated Trump's racist rhetoric.

"Man, President Trump's Twitter account has been pure fire lately," tweeted prominent neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. "This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for."

Meanwhile, the former president lauded or refused to condemn far-right extremists. He famously stated that "very fine people" were among the white nationalists, neo-Nazis, alt-right adherentsand other malicious bigots who came together at the Unite the Right events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, leading to the murder of a civil rights protester. Trump refused to disavow the right-wing street gang and hate group the Proud Boys or members of the QAnon cult, a far-right, pro-Trump movement predicated on anti-Semitic tropes and wild conspiracy theories. Proud Boys and QAnon fans would feature prominently in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.

Trump's anti-Black attacks spiked in 2020 over the backdrop of Black Lives Matter protests, which swept the nation after a white police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck for nine straight minutes.

As more than 15 million people of all races marched for basic racial justice, Trump called BLM "a symbol of hate" and signed an executive order aimed at jailing people who damaged monuments to the slaveholding Confederacy and other federal property. The June 2020 order instructed the attorney general to prioritize criminal prosecutions for the destruction of monuments on federal property, with prison sentences of up to 10 years.

That executive order was the excuse that Trump's agencies used for sending unmarked federal agents into Portland, Oregon, to round up leftist protesters. Acting DHS SecretaryChad Wolf issued a dramatic press release at the time, calling protesters who engaged in vandalism "violent anarchists" and referring to their actions as an "attack [on] America" and a "siege."

Expensive property damage occurred at some BLM protests from May to June, but the demonstrations were "remarkably nonviolent," according to research by The Washington Post. "The overall levels of violence and property destruction were low, and most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the BLM protesters," wrote the authors.

Roughly 93 percent of BLM protests from late May through late August were peaceful, according to a Princeton University study. However, law enforcement intervened more often than in other protests, sometimes escalating tensions and increasing the risk of violence, the study found.

As they inflated the threat posed by leftists, Wolf and his agency attempted to hide the biggest threat facing the U.S.: right-wing extremism. Acting DHS Deputy SecretaryKen Cuccinelli ordered an intelligence official to both exaggerate the threat posed by antifa and anarchist groups and to minimize the threat posed by white supremacist groups, according to a whistleblower complaint.

Trump said he would classify antifa as a terrorist organization, and Republican members of Congress, especially Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, played along.

These distortions were the backdrop for Trump's dishonest 2020 campaign strategy, which borrowed heavily from Richard Nixon's racist "Southern strategy" of the late 1960s. He repeatedly claimed that Democrats and violence in cities led by Democrats would "destroy" the suburbs, a not-so-subtle attempt to scare white suburban voters about crime and entice them to vote for him, the supposed "law and order" candidate.

Trump and his agencies pushed this narrative while police departments knew that far-right actors, who planned to attack protesters and law enforcement, were the primary threat. Many of these threats came from individuals affiliated with the boogaloo movement, a group of heavily armed anti-government extremists who want to incite a civil war. "Boogaloo bois" were among the Capitol insurrectionists, who ended up injuring nearly 140 police officers and killing one. Two other officers died by suicide after the insurrection.

After losing the election, in part because of his poor performance in the suburbs, Trump's increasingly unhinged legal team set out to invalidate the votes of millions of Black voters in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukeeand Philadelphia. The dozens of failed lawsuits filed by Trump campaign and Republican National Committee (RNC) attorneys were so laser-focused on invalidating Black Americans' votes that the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund sued Trump, his campaign, and the RNC in December for conspiring to violate the rights of Black voters.

"By targeting communities of color with false claims of voter fraud, and by coordinating actions to pressure state and local officials to discard votes cast in cities with large Black populations, [the defendants] have undermined our most sacred constitutional values," said Sam Spital, LDF's Director of Litigation.

Multiple lawyers from the Trump and RNC teams risk being disbarred, and some have been sued for defamation.

Trump and RAGA's dishonest and ultimately dangerous actions characterize a broader racist electoral strategy by Republicans at the state and federal levels in 2020. GOP political and advocacy groups and individual candidates used coded language and overt racism in their attempt to scare voters and win elections.

The opening night of the Republican National Convention in August was all about fear. The event featured Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, who called Trump "the bodyguard of Western civilization," and Patricia McCloskey, who claimed that Democrats "are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities" and want to "abolish the suburbs altogether." McCloskey and her husband, Mark, infamously brandished guns in their yard during a St. Louis BLM march last summer.

With the president and much of the right-wing think tank and advocacy infrastructure behind them, GOP political candidates ran campaigns directly against BLM and antifa, hoping that their dishonest claims and histrionics would scare voters enough to sweep them into elected office.

Successful Tennessee Senate candidate Bill Hagerty resigned from the board of broker R.J. O'Brien & Associates after the firm tweeted support for BLM. In a statement, Hagerty claimed that BLM"seeks to destroy the nuclear family, calls for violence, promotes anti-Semitism, tears down monuments, and seeks to completely defund and dismantle our police departments."

Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who lost her Georgiaseat to Black pastor Raphael Warnock, attacked BLM and members of the WNBA team she co-owns, even going on white supremacist Jack Posobiec's show to do so.

Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, who is Black, compared BLM and antifa to the Ku Klux Klan, a notorious white supremacist organization that lynched Black men. Owens, like several other Republican House freshmen, appeared on QAnon-affiliated podcasts last year as he ran for office. Numerous other Republican members of Congress have bashed BLM, including QAnon adherent, Islamophobeand ant-Semite Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who has called it a domestic terrorist organization. The House stripped Greene of her committee posts on Feb. 4 because of her support for bizarre conspiracy theories and endorsement of violence against Democratic lawmakers in recent years.

Other Republicans ran racist ads, including successful House candidate Bob Good, whose ad claimed that his Black opponent would make people less safe over images of nighttime fires, riotsand arrests.

State and local GOP candidates, including in Texas and Kansas, used racist ads with the same theme: Democrats, under the influence of Black activists and antifascists, will set communities on fire and unleash alarming rates of crime.

Much of the conservative fear-mongering highlighted the phrase "defund the police," a slogan used by activists and some progressive Democrats. Republican campaigns frequently distorted the nature of the position (many who used the phrase supported diverting some money from law enforcement budgets into public programs and did not advocate abolishing law enforcement altogether) and attributed it to candidates who did not want to "defund the police."

It's difficult to evaluate the overall effectiveness of Republicans' racist strategy. The GOP did unexpectedly well in House races, gaining over a dozen seats after many observers expected Democrats to widen their majority, and made slight gains in state elections. But Republicans lost the White House and their Senate majority.

Regardless of how successful the GOP's racist campaigning was, it's already clear that the party has no plans to temper its extremism. The Republican National Committee invited Trump to speak at its spring meeting, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had "a very good and cordial" meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Jan. 28 to discuss 2022 electoral strategy.

Despite seven Republican senators joining Democrats in voting to convict the ex-president for inciting the Capitol insurrection the highest number of opposition party votes for impeachment in U.S. history and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's condemnation of Trump's actions, state parties have rallied around Trump and attacked Republicans who voted to hold him accountable.

The Wyoming GOP censured Rep. Liz Cheney, the House Republican Conference Chair, and asked her to resign after she voted to impeach Trump. The South Carolina GOP censured Rep. Tom Rice for voting to impeach Trump on Jan. 13. The Oregon GOP condemned the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment and dishonestly called the insurrection a "false flag operation designed to discredit Pres. Trump." The central committee of the North Carolina GOP censured Sen. Richard Burr for his impeachment vote, and the state party in Louisiana censured Sen. Bill Cassidy.

A number of right-wing think tanks and political networks also worked overtime in 2020 to support attacks by Trump and the GOP on BLM and to portray the discussion of the impact of slavery and racism on our country as an attack on American values.

The executive director of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play organization that connects corporate lobbyists with conservative state lawmakers to produce model legislation, supported Trump's executive order on monuments. In July, ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson signed a letter backing the order, which portrayed racial justice protesters as "rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists" and "the mob." In a nod to Trump's attacks on the 1619 Project, an educational series with the premise that the U.S. was founded on slavery and racism published by The New York Times Magazine, the letter also says that Americans must "teach our history with honesty and respect" and uphold the nation's "culture and values."

Years ago, ALEC worked with the National Rifle Association to write a model bill that became Florida's "Stand Your Ground" legislation, which led to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who killed an unarmed Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in 2012. Zimmerman's exoneration sparked the first use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on social media.

The Heritage Foundation (co-founded by right-wing activist Paul Weyrich, who also co-founded ALEC)also attacks BLM directly. One article written by two staffers, originally appearing in the conservative New York Post, attributes a "radical, Marxist agenda" to the movement, something it portrays as a grave threat. The article and accompanying video that Heritage produced goes into hysterics over BLM goals, such as making tax codes more progressive and "supporting each other as extended families and 'villages' that collectively care for one another."

A coalition of leaders of ALEC, Heritage's political arm, the Tea Party Patriotsand a Republican front group called Moms for Safe Neighborhoods ran dramatic ads against Biden and Kamala Harris, echoing GOP candidates' claims that Democrats would endanger suburbanites' lives.

Biden & Harris, You're Not Safe With Them from Moms for Safe Neighborhoods on Vimeo.

The Capital Research Center, a right-wing "investigative think tank" and a member of the State Policy Network, has an ongoing series that attempts to discredit BLM. One "special report" titled "Radical Lives Matter" connected BLM with looting and mocked the idea of police brutality. The Capital Research Center is heavily funded by the Bradley Foundation, one of the top funders of right-wing, state-based groups.

As organizations like ALEC and Heritage attacked people's right to challenge racist police killings and promoted a version of U.S. history that diminishes the role that racism and slavery played, one of their main funders bankrolled white nationalist hate groups. DonorsTrust, often known as "the ATM" of the conservative movement, funneled $1.5 million to the VDARE Foundation and $10,500 to the foundation behind the American Renaissance magazine in 2019, CMD first reported. The organizations are two of the most notorious white nationalist outfits in the U.S.

DonorsTrust is a donor-advised fund sponsor, meaning that it manages the individual charitable accounts of its donor clients, who "advise" DonorsTrust on which nonprofits to fund. When CMD asked DonorsTrust CEO Lawson Bader for comment, he mischaracterized his organization's policies, claiming that his group has no control over where its donors direct their funds. However, according to DonorsTrust's own literature, its board determines which nonprofits are eligible for donations.

After Trump fans waged their Jan. 6 insurrection, some Republican members of Congress lied about antifa's involvement and even attempted to blame the violence and deaths on BLM. Others, like Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisianaand Lauren Boebert of Colorado, alleged that by supporting BLM, Democrats had normalized violence. Property destruction last summer was somehow justification for white nationalists, conspiracy theoristsand white militias' storming of the Capitol and plans to execute politicians. Republican members of Congress, including Matt Gaetz of Floridaand Marjorie Taylor Greene, added to this false equivalence by accusing Democrats of hypocrisy for supporting the largely peaceful protests but decrying the anti-democratic invasion of their own workplace.

Andsince the GOP's race-based scare tactics did not succeed at keeping its leader in the White House, the party is now doubling down on racial gerrymandering and voter suppression legislation to reduce turnout in communities of color.

The Brennan Center for Justice anticipates that the GOP will seek to further disenfranchise voters of color as they redraw congressional and state legislative districts, especially in the South, where increased political and racial diversity "pos[es] a serious new threat to the longstanding status quo of white Republican dominance." Republican state lawmakers will control this year's redistricting process in swing states like Florida, Georgiaand Texas.

Seizing on a sea of lies from Trump and other Republicans about nonexistent voter fraud, state lawmakers have also filed more than100 bills to make it more difficult for their constituents to vote by the end of January. If enacted, those measures will reverse 2020's voter turnout progress and impose new, burdensome requirements on voters that disproportionately impact people of color.

Visit link:
The 2020 Republican campaign: A systematic and sustained attack on people of color - Salon

George Zimmerman, currently a hot topic on social media platforms. If that name seems familiar to you then let me jog your memory. A black kid who was just 17 years old wonders near a gated community. And adult male shoots him because he looked suspicious.

George is the same man who took the life of a 17-year-old Trayvon Martin back in 2012. He was convicted for second-degree murder and manslaughter. But, just after a year, he was released due to a lack of evidence.

Many who read about the tragic incident wonder, where is George Zimmerman now in 2020? Is he serving time for his deed? Is he repenting for the life he took? To answer both questions, no, he is not. He lives comfortably posing as a painter.

Whats more, he even sued the dead boys parents and attorney for $100 million. Now, if he was a good man, he would be drowning in guilt. Beg for forgiveness to the dead boys parents and family. Not sue them for $100 million.

George Zimmerman was recently convicted for DUI. As they say, when the justice system fails, there is always Karma. However, he was once again released after a short amount of time.

The killer of Trayvon Martin faced multiple charges of domestic abuse. But the changes were always dropped for some undisclosed reasons.

George Zimmerman was a married man. I say was because his wife divorced him. Back in 2013, after he was cleared of all charges he returned home.

However, the story does not end there. No, no. However, his wife reported to the police that Zimmerman was abusing her. Moreover, she stated he assaulted her father and even went as far as to threaten her with a gun. Soon after the former married couple divorced.

Geoge Zimmerman was involved in two other relationships. However, they did not last very long due to his aggressive nature.

Moreover, both of his girlfriends claimed that their relationship with him was very abusive. Likewise, the dating app Tinder banned him for life.

As of 2020, George Zimmerman holds an approximated net worth of $100 thousand. Moreover, he made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the auction of the gun he shot Trayvon Martin. The gun was sold for $250 thousand.

As for his job he poses around as an artist. Moreover, he made thousands of dollars while posing as an artist. Furthermore, back in 2013, he sold a painting of an American flag for $100,099.99 on eBay. However, it was later revealed that he copied the painting from a stock image taken from Shutterstock.

See the original post:
Where is George Zimmerman Now 2020? Is Trayvon Martin ...

In March 2014, the Cream Bmp Daily web site published an article positing that George Zimmerman, the man charged (and ultimately acquitted) in the fatal shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012, had accidentally shot and killed himself while loading a gun:

911 first responders found George Zimmermans lifeless body at a Florida gun range after responding to an emergency call that he shot himself while loading his weapon.

Im not saying we took our time getting there, but weve shown up faster to black neighborhoods. According to a first responder, they stopped at every light, didnt use a siren and drove behind an elderly woman all before finally arriving on the scene. If he was a rapper hed be more famous now that hes dead, but nope! Everybody just glad hes dead.

Soon afterwards links and excerpts referencing this item were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered it mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, this item was just a spoof as noted in Cream Bmp Dailys About page, that web site deals strictly in satire:

CreamBmp.com Written by comedian CREAM. This website is comprised of satire and parody of current news and urban culture. For entertainment purposes only.

See the original post:
George Zimmerman Found Dead After Accidentally Shooting ...