Remember the "superpredators"? They were the supposedly super-violent youngsters of dark complexion that conservatives kept screaming about in the 1990s. We were told they were about to unleash an unprecedented wave of vicious crime any day now.

Those superpredators don't exist, and never did. But the myth of the "superpredator" offers us a new (and, admittedly, partially ironic) lens through which to view today's corporate executives, a class of people which is apparently remorseless about the harm it causes in the pursuit of self-enrichment.

Let's be clear: No group of human beings is uniquely predisposed toward evil. But society and government are supposed to discourage people from from acting on their worst impulses, and when it comes to the corporate class they - and we - have failed.

Now the rise of the Corporate Superpredator Class could culminate in the election of one of its own to the highest office in the land.

Fear of Children

The myth of the juvenile "superpredator" was promoted by conservatives in the 1990s and 2000s. As Fairness and Accuracy in Media reported in 1998, politicized professors and mainstream commentators were terrifying the public with stories about the "remorseless brutality" we can expect to see from the "teenaged time bomb" that TIME Magazine's scare piece described as follows: "They are just four, five and six years old now, but already they are making criminologists nervous."

But those superpredator children never existed. In fact, juvenile crime rates have declined "significantly" since the early 1990s, according to FBI statistics. But the fear engendered by ...

The Stand Your Ground law is most widely associated with the Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old killed in Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain who claimed he was acting in self-defense.

But as a recent Tampa Bay Times investigation indicates, the Martin incident is far from the only example of the law’s reach in Florida. The paper identified instances since 2005 where the state’s Stand Your Ground law has played a factor in prosecutors’ decisions, jury acquittals or a judge’s call to throw out the charges. (Not all the cases involved killings. Some involved assaults where the person didn’t die.)

The law removes a person’s duty to retreat before using deadly force against another in any place he has the legal right to be – so long as he reasonably believed he or someone else faced imminent death or great bodily harm. Among the Stand Your Ground cases identified by the paper, defendants went free nearly 70 percent of the time.

Although Florida was the first to enact a Stand Your Ground law, 24 other states enforce similar versions. Using the Tampa Bay findings and others, we’ve highlighted some of the most notable cases where a version of the Stand Your Ground law has led to freedom from criminal ...

What do you call a law that allows a person to shoot and kill another human being when they could otherwise walk away safely?

I can only call it immoral.

With George Zimmerman soon headed to a pre-trial hearing to evaluate whether he will be protected by the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida, it is important to understand exactly how the law has made permissible the use of lethal force and legalized acts of murder that previously never would have been deemed “justifiable homicides.”

In the wake of Zimmerman’s slaying of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, I have frequently heard people claim, “The ‘Stand Your Ground’ law does not allow you follow someone!” Often, the people claiming this are the ones responsible for the law, like the bill’s sponsor, Florida House Representative Dennis Baxley and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who signed it into law.

But, of course, Zimmerman had been carrying a gun and following — some would say stalking — young black men in his community for months before he ever encountered Trayvon Martin. He even notified police when he did so. More important, however, is the fact that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law removes an individual’s duty to retreat from a conflict in public even ...

Actor and activist Danny Glover speaks to prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for the first time after supporting him for more than two decades. "I just want to tell you — and I’m really emotional because I didn’t expect to hear your voice this morning right there — that we will continue to struggle to fight for your release. We love you, brother," Glover tells Abu-Jamal. "I am as pleased as punch and thrilled to hear you there," Abu-Jamal responds. On Occupy Wall Street, Abu-Jamal calls the protests "one of the greatest advances in the democracy movement in our modern period," but one that is only in its nascent stages. "They have something more important to do, and that’s to connect with other people’s movements and build a kind of resistance that can transform this country."

As the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) works to distance itself from the NRA-bill it backed as a “model” adopted in dozens of states, it may be hoping that people will not continue to dig into the damage done by its long love affair with gun groups, like the gun-industry funded NRA and fringe groups with ties to white supremacists like Gun Owners of America (GOA).

GOA’s Executive Director is Larry Pratt. In the early 1980s, Pratt and the GOA were outspoken supporters of the white rulers in South Africa during apartheid, calling a press conference in 1984 to present “evidence” that allegedly tied Bishop Desmond Tutu to an effort to violently overthrow the white minority regime in the country. In 1990, Pratt wrote a book titled “Armed People Victorious” based on his study of death squads in Guatemala and the Philippines, and advocated for similar “citizen defense patrols” in the United States. The idea reportedly caught on in 1992, when Pratt addressed a three-day meeting of neo-Nazis and Christian Adherents organized by white supremacist Pete Peters. He shared the stage with a former Ku Klux Klan leader and an Aryan Nation official.

Pratt also held leadership roles in ALEC for many years. His relationship with ALEC began in 1978, when ALEC began an effort to oppose a constitutional amendment giving the District of Columbia full voting rights in Congress. When Pratt was elected to the Virginia State Legislature in 1981, he took a leadership position in ALEC. He sat on ALEC’s board even after he left the ...

Yesterday, the candy company Mars, Inc. and the Arizona Public Service Company (Arizona’s largest electric utility) became the latest in a group of high-profile companies to part ways with the American Legislative Exchange Council. They join Kraft, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Intuit, and the Gates Foundation.

ALEC, as the group is better known, describes itself as “a constructive forum for state legislators and private sector leaders to discuss and exchange practical, state-level public policy issues.”  READ FULL POST 18 COMMENTS

The call to action in rallies across the country following Trayvon Martin’s death is a wake-up call for our country to confront racial profiling in our communities. Racial profiling may have killed Trayvon Martin, but it is the so-called prosecutorial discretion that allowed, and may still allow, his killer to escape justice.

It must be pointed out that his killer, George Zimmerman, has until now not been charged with murder because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense law that allows people who feel threatened to use deadly force in self-defense and says they have no duty to retreat. The law has been at the center of the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin.

As the tragedy of his death calls the country to examine the racial inequities of the criminal justice system, it must go beyond our common, and justified, focus on the racist zealots or inept police officers. It has to go where the real power lies – with the prosecutors – the ones who control the levers of the system in counties and states across the country. In Martin’s case, it was prosecutor Norm Wolfinger who allowed his killer to walk free. It is Wolfinger’s face that should be on signs, posted next to George Zimmerman in news articles, whose name should be woven into chants for justice.

And just as Zimmerman – a racist with a gun – represents a real threat to America, so too does Wolfinger – a prosecutor who’s given the completely subjective discretion to deliver or deny justice without any explanation or measure of accountability to the public.

The term “prosecutorial discretion” has the ring of legal jargon that would only be used by lawyers and judges, but it is a power that extends out of the courthouse and into the streets. As such, it needs to be worked into the vernacular of any civil rights movement that is hoping to bring justice to the Trayvon Martins of ...

Like most things that happen in America these days, the Trayvon Martin case is turning into yet another hearse trundling the Republican Party to its doom in November.

Here's a brief outline of the facts. It's Feb. 26. Trayvon Martin is a 17-year-old black kid watching a big basketball game in the home of his father's fiancée in Sanford, a small-town outlier of Orlando, Fla. Sanford has a population of 55,000, about a third black. The fiancée lives in a mixed-race, gated community. At halftime Martin goes to the corner store and buys an iced tea and a bag of Skittles.

It's raining, and Martin has his hood up over his head and is talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone. On his way back, he is spotted by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a cop wannabe, self-appointed neighborhood crime watcher. Apparently, he has pestered the police station for months with reports of "suspicious 12-year-olds" walking through the neighborhood. Zimmerman — white dad, Latina mother — is wearing a red jacket and blue jeans. In his pocket is a Kel-Tec 9 mm automatic pistol.

Zimmerman calls the local station and says he's following a suspicious character. He describes Martin as black and says he's acting strangely and could be on drugs. The teenager starts to run, Zimmerman says. A 911 dispatcher asks Zimmerman whether he's following Martin, and Zimmerman says he is. The dispatcher says clearly that Zimmerman doesn't need to do that.

There's a lull in the transmission, and you can hear Zimmerman mutter clearly to himself, "These assholes, they always get away." On the call between Zimmerman and the 911 dispatcher, he also says "fucking coons." CNN says the words are indistinct, which they aren't. CNN also says the case is "complicated," which it isn't.

Later, the Martin family lawyer relays Trayvon's girlfriend's account of her last call with him. She ...

I was George Zimmerman. I can speak from personal experience and tell you why he needs to be charged for the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Last year I was living in central Florida, just 30 minutes from where Trayvon’s lifeless body was found soaking in the rain. My neighborhood had been on high alert because of a series of burglaries. My wife and I had tools stolen from our backyard and the security of my family weighed heavy on me. I owned a Bushmaster AR-15 variant, which is a semi-automatic assault rifle, and I was fully prepared to use it if needed. I was aware of Florida’s stand your ground law and took comfort knowing that I had the right to defend myself if threatened with physical danger.

Over the next week there were more crimes. Our alarms were triggered and I took my gun out of the house and into the yard looking for who did it. I didn’t find anything except a ripped t-shirt. Over those two weeks I called in a few police reports and we heard a few other alarms going off. Police were cruising our neighborhood more often. We felt unsafe. That heightened level of fear makes you begin to look at everyone with suspicion. It’s a situation I don’t wish on anyone.

READ FULL POST 47 COMMENTS

For far too long, violence targeting young people of color has been tolerated, even condoned, in the United States. The killing of Trayvon Martin is part of a horrific history—one that can only be stopped if all of us, of all colors, take a stand. That means standing up to individual acts of violence, but also to systematic efforts to make our laws friendly to big corporations that profit from guns and violence.

Slavery was where it all started, of course. But Reconstruction, when former slaves were promised opportunities for education, full citizenship, and livelihoods, gave way quickly to a backlash that returned many former slaves to miserable conditions and forced labor. Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow, recounts how variably enforced laws—vagrancy, for instance—were used to lock up large numbers of African Americans for nothing more than walking while black. Convicts were often forced into labor not unlike that of slaves, leased out to plantations, railroads, lumber camps, and corporations.

African Americans who found fault with this system—or who committed such infractions as daring to succeed in business or failing to yield to a white person on a sidewalk—could find themselves dead, victims of domestic terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Fast forward to February 26, 2012, when Trayvon Martin, age 17, returning to his father’s fiancée’s home in Sanford, Fla., after buying a bag of candy and an iced tea, was followed ...

In 2004, the National Rifle Association honored Republican Florida state legislator Dennis Baxley with a plum endorsement: Its Defender of Freedom award.

The following year, Baxley, a state representative, worked closely with the NRA to push through Florida’s unprecedented “stand your ground” law, which allows citizens to use deadly force if they “reasonably believe” their safety is threatened in a public setting, like a park or a street.

People would no longer be restrained by a “duty to retreat” from a threat while out in public, and would be free from prosecution or civil liability if they acted in self-defense.

Florida’s law is now under a cloud as a result of the controversial February shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, in Sanford, Fla. The 28-year-old shooter, George Zimmerman, who was licensed to carry a gun — and once had a brush — claims he acted in self-defense after a confrontation with Martin, and some legal experts say Florida’s law could protect Zimmerman, who has not been charged. The case has inflamed passions nationwide in part because Zimmerman is Hispanic and Martin was African-American. Baxley, whose state party has benefited from large NRA donations, contends his law shouldn’t shield Zimmerman at all because he pursued Martin.

The NRA has been curiously quiet on the matter since the shooting as the nation takes stock — in light of the Martin case and other similar examples — of whether “stand-your-ground” laws are more dangerous than useful to enhance public safety. The gun-rights organization did not respond to requests for comment. But the group’s silence contrasts sharply with its history of unabashed activism on stand-your-ground legislation. Since the Florida measure passed, the NRA has flexed its considerable muscle and played a crucial role in the passage of more than 20 similar laws ...

“The thing is that, when you are a popular athlete, and you accept the money and the fame, and you become a front person for those who have the power, and they say be like this guy and kids that are coming up say, well, be like him, I won ’t protest against anything, I’ll accept everything, I’ll just try to be a great athlete and make a lot of money So a culture dies when you that. You’re doing a great injustice to young kids that are coming up, and I never wanted to be a representation of less than a man and have young kids coming up emulating me.” —Jim Brown

The senseless killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain” has provoked anguish, rage and now, at long last, resistance. We’ve seen rallies, demonstrations and walkouts at dozens upon dozens of high schools in Florida alone. Even more remarkably, this resistance has found expression in the world of sports. An impressive group of NBA players from Carmelo Anthony to Steve Nash to the leaders of the NBA Players Association have spoken out and called for justice.

The most notable and widely publicized example of athletic solidarity was seen on the NBA’s marquee team, the Miami Heat. The entire Heat squad posed for a photo, all wearing the now iconic hooded sweatshirts. Trayvon was wearing a “hoodie” when he was killed, and this fact has, maddeningly, been a central rationale given by his killer’s defenders for why he was perceived as a threat.

Of all teams in the league, the Heat had the greatest responsibility to step up and be heard. They were Trayvon’s favorite and he was killed that late afternoon after leaving his house for a snack during ...

On an August morning in 1955, a 14-year-old Chicago student, visiting relatives in Mississippi, stopped in a small-town grocery store with a group of friends.  While there, the visitor from Chicago was said to have whistled at the white woman working behind the counter, a profoundly dangerous thing to do in the world of Jim Crow America.

Within a few days, the woman’s husband and his brother came to the home where the young boy was visiting.  They transported him to a barn, beat him, and gouged out one of his eyes only to shoot him through the head and dispose of his body in a river, weighing it down with a 70-pound cotton gin fan.

Days later, his body was found, dragged from the river and returned to his mother in Chicago.  She insisted that his body be shown publicly in the casket to demonstrate to the world the brutality and senselessness of the killing.  It was a murder that riveted the nation and showcased to the world the horror of the ruthless violence that befalls African-American youth.

That 14-year-old’s name was Emmett Till.  Trayvon Martin is the Emmett Till of this generation.

The death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old cheerful high school senior, is a crime so horrifying that it has galvanized, if belatedly, the attention of the entire country.

By now, his story is well known.  The young man was walking through a gated community in a suburb of Orlando when a neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, approached him.  Zimmerman called police saying that the young man looked suspicious and that he was Black.

The police told Zimmerman not to follow the young man, explaining that they were on their way.  Nonetheless, Zimmerman approached Martin.  There are 911 calls that carry the young man’s chilling and heartbreaking cries for help, followed by a gunshot.

Zimmerman said he shot the young ...

“Stand Your Ground,” “Shoot First," “Make My Day” — state laws asserting an expansive right to self-defense — have come into focus after last month’s killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

While local prosecutors have not arrested the shooter, George Zimmerman, the case is now being investigated by the Department of Justice and a Florida state attorney. It’s not clear whether Florida’s self-defense law will be applied in the case. (The police report on the shooting refers to it as an “unnecessary killing to prevent unlawful act.”)

Still, in not arresting Zimmerman, local officials have pointed to Florida’s wide definition of self-defense. In 2005, Florida became the first state to explicitly expand a person’s right to use deadly force for self-defense. Deadly force is justified if a person is gravely threatened, in the home or “any other place where he or she has a right to be.”

In Florida, once self-defense is invoked, the burden is on the prosecution to disprove the claim.

Most states have long allowed the use of reasonable force, sometimes including deadly force, to protect oneself inside one’s home — the so-called Castle Doctrine. Outside the home, people generally still have a “duty to retreat” from an attacker, if possible, to avoid confrontation. In other words, if you can get away and you shoot anyway, you can be prosecuted. In Florida, there is no duty to retreat. You can “stand your ground” outside your home, too.

Florida is not alone. Twenty-three other states now allow people to stand their ground. Most of these laws were passed after Florida’s. (A few states never had a duty to retreat to begin with.)

Here’s a rundown of the states with laws mirroring the one in Florida, where ...

On the rainy night of Sunday, Feb. 26, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin walked to a convenience store in Sanford, Fla. On his way home, with his Skittles and iced tea, the African-American teenager was shot and killed. The gunman, George Zimmerman, didn’t run. He claimed that he killed the young man in self-defense. The Sanford Police agreed and let him go. Since then, witnesses have come forward, 911 emergency calls have been released, and outrage over the killing has gone global.

Trayvon Martin lived in Miami. He was visiting his father in Sanford, near Orlando, staying in the gated community known as The Retreat at Twin Lakes, where Zimmerman volunteered with the Neighborhood Watch program. The Miami Herald reported that Zimmerman was a “habitual caller” to the police, making 46 calls since January 2011. He was out on his rounds as a self-appointed watchman, packing his concealed 9 mm pistol, when he called 911: “We’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there’s a real suspicious guy ... this guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something.”

Later in the call, Zimmerman exclaims, “OK. These a—holes always get away. ... [Expletive], he’s running.”

Sounds of Zimmerman moving follow, along with a controversial utterance from Zimmerman, under his breath, considered by many to be “[Expletive] coons.” The sound of his running prompted the 911 operator to ask, “Are you following him?” Zimmerman replied, “Yeah,” to which the dispatcher said, “OK, we don’t need you to do that.”

One of the attorneys representing the Martin family, Jasmine Rand, told me: “The term ‘coon’ on the audiotape ... is a very obvious racial slur against ...

We speak with Caroline Brewer of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence about how the killing of Trayvon Martin has brought renewed scrutiny to Florida's controversial "Stand Your Ground" law, also referred to by critics as the "shoot first" law. Backed by the National Rifle Association, the law expands the right of citizens to claim self-defense in the killing of others. More than 20 states have similar measures in place. Martin says the law allowed Floridians with criminal backgrounds — including many who plead guilty to assault, burglaries and child molestation — to obtain concealed carry licenses. "You're talking about people who are dangerous, people who are violent, and yet just within a short time after the law was passed, Florida had hundreds and hundreds of these people with these licenses to go out and kill somebody else," Brewer says. "And pretty much it was their word against the other person's."