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Let's not forget the job done by journalists at the New York Times and initially at the Brunswick News for digging out and reporting the facts of the case, keeping it alive. Newspapers are intended for far more than just carrying Black Friday advertisements.

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Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson your precise delineation of the despicable details of the Arbery Murder is equal to a steel etching on crystal that you as a fine historian and technical writer demonstrate great understanding of the importance of significant detail.

After a life time of reading history in my eighth decade you have prompted me to actually study history in detail.

You have a genius for reaching through the thickets of inconsequential details and surgically excising the salient facts that do make important events, History.

You are my first read everyday and give me a deep attraction to revisit you during the day.

Again, Thank You.

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Progress? Maybe. Throughout this entire process; the public and the judicial, I have not read or heard any variation on the word “lynching”.

Even HCR avoided it.

“And there, things might have rested, much as they have so often rested in our nation’s long history when white men have killed Black men.”

By anyone’s definition, the murder of Ahmad Arbery was a lynching, the three men who carried it out made up a lynch mob, and the cooperation and cover-up by local law enforcement is consistent with the history of lynching in this country.

Ahmad Arbery was lynched.

We need to say the word.

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I thought some might be interested in this piece on Ahmaud Arbery from May 2020. (There is also a link at the bottom of the page to a short piece that the author wrote after the conviction of the murderers a few days ago.)

"Nobody belonged to the salt marshes of coastal Georgia more than Ahmaud Arbery. His family’s roots there run more than 200 years deep. A native of those same marshes writes about who Ahmaud was, how well he was loved, and what his community must reckon with in the wake of his murder."

https://bittersoutherner.com/2020/ahmaud-arbery-holds-us-accountable

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Good morning everyone. I have one word to say about this Letter: Yep. Especially yep about the release of the video being possibly the ONLY reason why justice was actually served. The hubris of the trio of lynchers that everyone would go along with their narrative of events led to that--for them--fatal misstep. I hope they rot in jail forever.

Today I mourn the loss of Stephen Sondheim, who died suddenly, a day after what was apparently a lovely Thanksgiving day spent with his loved ones. The soundtrack to my life has been dominated by his music in so many ways. Sondheim, from a very young age, displayed an unerring empathy for the human condition and I think was at his most eloquent when at his most angry. His contribution to American music as both a composer and lyricist is unparalleled.

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"If Gregory Mc Michael had not produced that video..." He produced it because he was still living under the delusion of our racist history as a nation and in Georgia in particular. That has proved not to be the case this time and, I hope, continues into the future.

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It’s hard to tap the heart icon for this distressing but absolutely necessary clear, moment by moment, explanation of how Ahmaud Arbery was murdered and the case ‘dropped’ by numerous officials…but the Thank You is for you & your helpers who dig up the complete circumstances and enlighten us. Hope you’re long since asleep.

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Many thanks, Heather. The outcome of this trial indicates that there may be a path to equal justice after all.

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Twenty years ago, my life changed forever with the arrival, to the greater Boston area, of a group of "Lost Boys of Sudan". We "Moms" started out taking them meals, warm clothing and unexpectedly, they filled our hearts and lives! We formalized financial efforts and created a couple of non profits for education and mentoring. I have seen the insidious racism these individuals and families have experienced (some of it directed at me) in supposedly politically liberal and "welcoming" communities from Cambridge to wealthy/"woke" White suburbs.

Someday, I hope to pull together a book about that journey we continue to share but In the meantime, 8 children (18 mos. to age 10) who call me "granny" and whom I cherish and get such a kick out of (kids are universally just kids!) are coming face-to-face with the reality that they are Black in America. While the word lynching was not brought into the trial (probably a shrewd strategy on the part of the prosecution) what happened to Ahmaud Arbery (and so many others) was a lynching and it needs to be written and said out loud.

For 20 years I have experienced a level of fear for my Sudanese families I never felt with my biological sons. When my youngest son was in his mid-20's he was in Tupelo, Mississippi for work and went for a run in a local Black neighborhood . . . . he did not fear for his life.

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I remember the Rodney King case when a video camera weighed as much as a case of bottled water. The outcome was proof of police brutality not murder as a life was not taken in that altercation.

Let’s hope there are at least less hate crimes with the advancement of video recording from phones, parking lots, body cams, etc.

What is most astonishing is that the defense actually thought the video looked like a justified homicide. White male supremacy is like a cancer. Without early detection and treatment it will metastasize regardless of advances in technology.

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It is a story where justice was served as opposed to Rittenhouse’s trial. We have a long way to go before we fully acknowledge the extent of racism in our country.

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Today's Letter centered on the killing of Ahmaud Arbery; the murder case against, Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William 'Roddie' Bryan and the guilty conviction of all three men. The Letter ended in this way:

'But there is one sticking point: if Gregory McMichael had not produced that video, it’s entirely possible that the crime and its coverup would never have been prosecuted.'

Perhaps that is correct - the conviction depended on the cell phone video, but, perhaps, too little credit was given to the local reporter covering the case, Larry Hobbs of the Brunswick News.

'Before it was a national touchstone, the Ahmaud Arbery murder was a local news story'

'Ali Velshi highlights the work of Larry Hobbs, reporter for the Brunswick News, who didn't settle for meager answers from local police and filed a public records request to get the police report on the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, which would become the basis for reporting that would shed some of the first public light on the case.' (MSNBC)

'Journalists are reexamining their reliance on a longtime source: The police'

'... for Larry Hobbs, who wrote that first short news article, doubts about the case were raised at the onset.'

'Hobbs, one of four reporters at the daily Brunswick News, said police wouldn’t answer his questions or even tell him Arbery’s name, which he discovered by calling the coroner. He published four stories before he obtained the police report, based almost entirely on an interview with Greg McMichael, who said he told his son to grab his gun when he saw a Black man running.

“Red flags start going up,” Hobbs said. “All the things started falling into place that this wasn’t right.”

'Prosecutors were also not forthcoming, he said. Jackie Johnson, the Brunswick district attorney who was later indicted over her handling of the investigation and was voted out of office, gave the case to Waycross District Attorney George Barnhill. Barnhill justified the use of force as a lawful “citizen’s arrest” in a letter to police. Meanwhile, he told Hobbs he was still investigating, Hobbs said.'

“The main thing I did was just not let go of it,” Hobbs said. “I didn’t do any great writing. I didn’t do any investigative reporting. I’m a small-town newspaper. We don’t really have time to invest. I come in every day and there’s an empty newspaper I have to do my part to fill up.”

At that time, the New York Times reported on the shooting, bringing national exposure and emerging details of the video that would later be released. Still, Hobbs has been credited for his dogged reporting, as he stayed on the case, covering the trial every day until he wrote Wednesday’s story of the conviction.' (Washington Post)

'Jury finds all three defendants guilty of murder in Ahmaud Arbery shooting'

• By LARRY HOBBS lhobbs@thebrunswicknews.com

• Nov 25, 2021

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Links to the Brunswick News and Washington Post articles are below

https://thebrunswicknews.com/breaking/jury-finds-all-three-defendants-guilty-of-murder-in-ahmaud-arbery-shooting/article_f99d4097-fe8f-5216-a99f-71f648d66153.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/24/arbery-video-conviction/

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Good Old Boys with pick up trucks and guns? NeoNazis with Tiki torches? So yesterday.

Pubescent sociopaths with guns. So now. TrumpYouth on the march with assault rifles and up for Congressional medals. They're not just tweeting from their parents' basements anymore.

New South vs Sclerotic MidWest?

But seriously. Yes, tech in the form of phone videos. But very much tenacity in the form of community activism and community journalists. And the truthfulness of a jury. Overcoming the racist right wing apparatus of official injustice.

So yes. Please keep standing on street corners and in front of courthouses, writing Letters to the Editor, contacting your elected officials, and supporting local independent journalism which covers, rather than covers up, local goings on. And please, answer the call to jury duty and pay attention to candidates for office at every level. (That derelict judge in Wisconsin ran unopposed.)

As HCR said to Bill Moyers:

"But you think of all the sacrifices that people have made to keep this country a democracy and to keep it healthy and to try and keep it equal. It seems to me to be a small price for me to pay to take the extraordinary training I’ve had and all the privilege I’ve had in my life and, you know, stay up a little bit later than I would like to."

Thank You HCR. An example to follow - to find ways and take time to for activism in our days. It doesn't necessarily take extraordinary training or privilege - but our determination and diligence.

https://billmoyers.com/story/bill-moyers-and-heather-cox-richards-on-her-daily-letters/

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"But there is one sticking point: if Gregory McMichael had not produced that video, it’s entirely possible that the crime and its coverup would never have been prosecuted."

Yes.   Not just possible, but, probable. That fact was clear from the very first time I saw the video, however, I never understood why it was released until today and today's Letter.  

Now I understand:  McMichael released the video thinking it would exonerate him in an interesting reveal of his own perspective on shooting an innocent, obviously unarmed man who was actually backing away (by my own examinaiton of the video) when McMichael pulled the trigger on the shotgun.  

So, going forward, if I know that video can get white folks charged with murder, well, so does everyone in America.

So, don't look for much video to surface of future murders of black men by white men unless it is somebody's doorbell camera but cops are on to those now too.

Because, independent of GBI's claim that things are changing in Georgia, and by extension, the USA, I don't think we have clear evidence of that from this trial, as Dr. Richardson points out.

Without video?   No conviction.  

Because, without the video? The white man was (will be) believed and the dead man cannot give his testimony.  

--

mike.km2b@gmail.com   

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A brilliant retelling of the steps that ultimately led the three bigoted vigilantes to court. I needed the clarity of your pre-trial run-through, Heather, to understand how our justice system could have gone awry yet again. As always, my thanks!

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"if Gregory McMichael had not produced that video, it’s entirely possible that the crime and its coverup would never have been prosecuted."

...but he did...and it was

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