Mobs

There is a trend to see mobbing, enabled by mobile communication, as fun or as an expression of benign causes. Tahrir Square was an example of the power of mobbing, enabled by cell phones. However, there is a darker side to mobbing. 

Spike Lee, the famous director/producer of films, made a simple mistake on his Twitter feed recently. He forwarded a malicious Tweet which gave specific information about the whereabouts of George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin in Florida. The Tweet, sent initially by Marcus D. Higgins, encouraged its followers to find and commit violence upon Mr. Zimmerman. Unfortunately, the information in the Tweet was inaccurate and gave the address of elderly Zimmermans who have no relationship with the perpetrator Zimmerman. That's right, it was like sending a lynch mob of as many as 250,000 angry people to the wrong address over the killing of a Black adolescent in the American South. The irony is stunning.

As a gay activist who lived through the Matthew Shepard incident,  I can understand the rage of African-Americans in the Trayvon Martin case. As the partner of a gay man who was nearly stabbed to death by a Latino street gang in the 1990s in Boston, I can understand how race and ethnicity complicate these situations. However, understanding is not condoning for a humanist. 

Mr. Zimmerman is a citizen and deserves a trial by a qualified judge and jury. This is civilization. The uncivilized actions of the law enforcement system in Florida has complicated the process. It is not the role of policemen to judge any case of violent killing. That is not democracy. That is a police state. 

There is a need for personal moderation and responsibility with public electronic media, just as with any other form of communication. As a humanist, I feel it is necessary to be measured in expressing my reactions in transmitted text that is open to public scrutiny and interpretation. Yelling "Fire!" falsely in a theater is a crime in many places for obvious reasons.The subsequent stampede could injure or kill an innocent. Using electronic media to incite mob violence is just another form of lynching. It does not serve justice.