The unbelievable injustice of the verdict that allowed George Zimmerman, the irrefutable killer of Trevon Martin, to walk the streets a free man has got me thinking: If the Florida wishes to sweep its obvious race problem under the rug because there are no consequences, then I want nothing to do with the state.
It won’t be easy. After all. I do love orange juice and the vast majority of orange juice comes from the Sunshine State. Regardless, it is something I must do. I cannot in good conscience support a state that allows such inequality to exist in the United States. That includes no vacation to Disney World or Universal Studios Florida and no involvement with any Florida sports teams from the college teams: The Seminoles, the Ducks, the Gators, to the Big Leagues: The Heat, The Dolphins, The Rays, the Lightening, the Buccaneers etc. If I find out a product is from Florida, I will not purchase it. Any company that is overtly doing business in the state, I will avoid to the best of my abilities.
Orange Juice just isn’t the same with that racist aftertaste.
It was, after all the Florida people who wanted this stupid Stand-Your-Ground law that allows a murderer to walk the streets while a woman who shot in the air at her abusive husband (in Florida) to serve 20 years in jail. Of course, she’s black, so it’s totally different, yeah that and she didn’t kill anybody. I will address the obvious racism and covert racism in conservative politics in a piece I have coming up, for now, however, let’s just say that this is the tip of the iceberg in Florida, and it has, in the past, affected the nation at large.
George W. Bush was “elected” because Florida has awful election laws. Laws that allowed the Republicans to remove hundreds of thousands of legitimate (not voter machine error) votes and purge those peoples voices because they had a similar name to a convicted felon. Can you guess which segment of the population was disproportionately targeted in these vote purges? Can you guess which communities were plagued with voter machines that were the most outdated and created the greatest amount of rejected votes.
A black voter in Florida was 10 times more likely to get their vote thrown out than a white voter.
While we’re on the subject, can you guess which segment of the population has their votes restricted by Florida’s outdated laws that make it nearly impossible for convicts to get their ability to vote back? It is injustice on top of injustice on top of injustice.
Yet in Florida, their wonderful governor, the dishonorable Rick Scott, who he himself should be in jail for scamming taxpayers out of millions of dollars in Medicare fraud, tried to drug test welfare recipients because it was obvious that they were lazy and all on drugs. Can you guess which group of Americans gets the most blame for being on Welfare even though the largest group of Welfare recipients are poor white Southerners? (Not only that but did you know that Whites make up a smaller percentage of the poor but take a much larger percentage of the welfare.) Oh and how did the program do? Well before being found to be a major Constitutional violation of the 4th Amendment, only 2.6% of recipients failed (mostly for marijuana) while the other 97.4% passed, costing the state more than double what it saved in kicking those 2.6% off of Welfare, again, for marijuana. It ended up being one of Scott’s biggest failures.
It just goes on and on. Zimmerman isn’t the reason, he’s the symptom of a much larger problem in the Sunshine State. I have had enough.
The possibilities of a Federal case are pretty slim. A civil case will take years to play out and all the while, Zimmerman and his family are playing the victim card. I hope that Zimmerman’s life is ruined, as it should be, yet the possibilities of him becoming some sort of conservative hero are real. He may end up becoming rich for murdering an underage boy. Something has to be done. Something peaceful that can counter-act Zimmerman’s statement of violence.
That’s when our old friend the boycott came to my mind. What hurts people in this country the most? When you give Mr. Pocketbook a little diet. Then I checked today, apparently MoveOn.Org and other organizations have already put together the means to send Floridians the message (see below) and Time already wrote a piece on the issue. Oh and get this, Stevie Wonder is boycotting Florida too!
It’s not about punishing the people, it’s about good old fashioned capitalism. If I ate at a restaurant and the owner revealed to me that they were racist, I wouldn’t eat their again, pure and simple. I wish them all the luck in the world but they won’t get my money. The Florida brand has been tarnished and until they polish it up by making positive changes to their racial problems, I won’t support Florida business.
So if you hate racism, those stupid Stand Your Ground laws or are just plain upset about the Zimmerman verdict. There is something you can do that will send a message for change. Sign the petition and make your voice heard. Sacrifice Orange Juice for a while and put off that trip to Orlando or Miami a few years. There are plenty of states in the union are beautiful to visit this time of year that don’t rise to the level of injustice as Florida.
So let’s send them a message.
Sign MoveOn.org’s Petition.
Visit and Like the Two Boycott Florida Facebook Pages:
Boycott Florida
Use Twitter with #BoycottFlorida
