Jack Cashill - If I had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman

If I Had a Son

JACK CASHILL

RACE, GUNS, AND THE RAILROADING OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN

IF I HAD A SON

WND Books, Inc.
Washington, D.C.

Copyright Jack Cashill 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Book Designed by Mark Karis

WND Books are distributed to the trade by:
Midpoint Trade Books
27 West 20th Street, Suite 1102
New York, NY 10011

WND Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases. WND Books, Inc., also publishes books in electronic formats. For more information call (541) 474-1776 or visit www.wndbooks.com.

First Edition

ISBN 13 Digit: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Library of Congress information available.

Printed in the United States of America.

O N JUNE 5, 1989, a lone young man in a white shirt stood defiantly in front of a column of Type 59 tanks heading east on Beijings Avenue of Eternal Peace. The tanks stopped. They had to. Too many people around the world were watching for the tanks to just run the man down.

Among those following events in Tiananmen Square was a fellow now known to friends as Sundance, a recent college grad then back at home in Florida. The outrageous bravery of the unknown Chinese man fascinated him. Although not at all political at the time, and an insignificant witness to the tragedy, Sundance found himself drawn deeply to Tank Man and the other young dissidents under fire. For the first time, Sundance watched the news intently, Ted Koppels Nightline in particular, and tuned in to talk radio as well.

Sundance remembers listening to a radio show in his car on which a panel of guests weighed in on the right wing crackdown in China. The oppressors were communists, thought Sundance. How could they be right wing? When he got homethis was before cell phones or the InternetSundance turned on the show, got the call-in number, and dialed. He had never done anything like this before. I just need to correct the host, he told the producer. The oppressors in China are hard-line communists. Theyre on the far left.

Next thing Sundance knew, he was on the air. He repeated his assertion to the panelists about the misinformation they were spreading. For a few excruciating seconds, no one quite knew what to saydead air weighs heavily on radio. Finally, one panelist spoke up. Youre right, he conceded. With that admission, he made Sundance aware that the individual citizen can sometimes see the world more clearly than his supposed betters in the media.

Slowly, tentatively, Sundance began his transition from passive bystander to intellectually engaged participant in American democracy. That much said, life kept him on the political sidelines. He returned to the grocery chain where he had bagged his way through his adolescence and worked his way up to very near the top. He also started a family. In the meantime, the Internet was opening doors for activists that had never been opened before. By the 2008 election, Sundance was a regular on a few key blogs. He had found his voice in their comments section and met people with similar views and who also wanted a voice. The readers of these blogs were creating a genuine community downstairs. Often, they would direct their comments to the posts of others rather than the article itself. Alliances formed. Friendships grew out of the alliances.

By 2009 Sundance felt most at home at Hillbuzz, an unorthodox and oddly conservative blog overseen by eccentric Hillary Clinton supporter and openly gay Kevin Dujan. For Hillbuzz regular Stella, a Detroit-area grandma and IT professional, Dujans site proved to be a hospitable watering hole until that terrible Saturday in November 2010. Explains Sharon, a sixty-something farmers daughter from Montana and a fellow Hillbuzz devotee, Dujan went weird on us. He started insulting guests, many of whom had been supportive. After some harsh words, visitors like Sharon and Stella found themselves being driven away or even formally banned. Stella remembers being horrified at the real possibility that [she] would be separated from [her] friends forever.

By that time, though, the collective had made enough e-mail contacts to regroup at a side room called the Connection. There they talked among themselvesSundance, Ytz4mee, Sharon, Stella, Finch, WeeWeed, Bijou, Garnette, Ad Remand concluded they were ready for something more. I was tired of being nice, says Ytz4mee, a military spouse and full-time mother of four. We needed a space where we could be ourselves and teach others how to deconstruct the mainstream media narrative. And so, in February 2011, the blogging collective known as the Conservative Treehouse found a cyber home all its own.

Like Sundance, all the Treepers, as the Treehouse participants called themselves, can define with some precision the moment when they switched from passive witness to active participant in the life of the republic. For a few, the transition was even more dramatic as they morphed, like Ytz4mee, from raving socialist to stalwart constitutionalist. But none of the eight admins who run the site, Sundance included, ever expected that one day they would be standing, metaphorically at least, where Tank Man stood.

They have stared down a powerful hydra-headed force that the mainstream media, out of fear or ideological complicity, refuse even to acknowledge. We Aint Backing Down, Sundance head-lined a post in bold red letters after the opposition began to pound them. Get That Through Your Thick Skulls. It was Ytz4mee who first labeled this force the Black Grievance Industry, or just BGI. The BGI is not as scary as the Chinese army, but if the Treepers are just about all that stands between you and it, the BGI can be pretty damn frightening. Those with doubts need only ask the family of the man whose rights the Treepers have spent more than a year defending, the besieged white Hispanic, George Michael Zimmerman. George and his family will put those doubts to rest.

O N SUNDAY NIGHT, February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman sat down with Sanford Police Department (SPD) detectives and wrote out in longhand his account of the shocking incident that had just left him rattled and bloody. Zimmerman, who writes well, began with background information. In August 2011 his neighbors house had been broken into while his neighbor was home with her infant son. She barricaded herself and her child in an upstairs bedroom and called 9-1-1. The SPD quickly responded, and the intruders fled. Zimmermans wife, Shellie, saw them fleeing and became scared of the rising crime. Zimmerman promised that he would do what he could to keep her safe. One result was that he and some of his Retreat at Twin Lakes neighbors formed a Neighborhood Watch Program. The SPD gave them a nonemergency number to call if they saw anything suspicious.

At 7:09 p.m. on that Sunday evening, Zimmerman followed through on the advice the police had given him. Upon driving to the neighborhood Target to do some grocery shopping, he spotted a male approximately 511 to 6 2 casually walking in the rain and looking into homes. Zimmerman was driving slowly behind the suspect when he called the number he had been given: