KudzuRunner wrote:
Excellent piece. I'd urge everybody watch it. There are several key lines. One of them is at 19:55-20:00. Wow, that has been debunked numerous times...even by your own acknowledgment of the TM 911 call.
It's a pretty down-the-middle factual report. It's curious that it repeatedly refers to the McMichaels by their first names: Mr. Travis, Mr. Greg. That's quirky.
In the brisk survey of surveillance footage, it also doesn't include some footage of several white kids (not adults) on bicycles pausing to visit the house.
By offering us several earlier 911 calls at length, giving us a chance to hear Travis McMichael report intruders, is 1) makes him seem more like a concerned neighbor than a racist vigilante; and 2) makes clear that by the time of the deadly encounter, he was primed to see Arbery as THE "black guy" who had been visiting the construction-house on previous occasions AND, crucially, although this isn't said in so many words, he almost surely made the leap and assumed, with zero evidence, that Arbery was also the person who had stolen a gun out of his truck. He felt himself besieged and the neighborhood besieged. He had an enough-is-enough response. Since one of the earlier 911 calls had him, shaken, saying that the black male intruder had put his hand into his pants or shorts as though he had a gun, he also assumed that the person he was chasing--Arbery, as it happened--might be armed.
I see no reason to assume that he grabbed his gun and chased Arbery with the depraved intent of killing him. That's silly, frankly, and it's why--speaking here as a scholar of lynching--I don't this the lynching accusation current being batted around is justified.
Travis got in way over his head, though, and there is, as far as I know, zero evidence that Arbery 1) stole anything from the site;
Apparently there is footage of him removing items from his pocket and dropping them while running away from the construction site.
2) was in fact the same guy as the earlier black "intruder";
Others have said it has been verified that he was seen at that home and others at night
3) deserved in any way to be singled out for this armed stop.
HE was at minimum trespassing...and that alone is enough to warrant the neighbor to call 911 and report him. If he was just there to grab a drink of water why snoop around the place before getting the water and why go there prior nights, and why bolt away when leaving if he had done nothing wrong, and why not stop and talk with those asking him to do so if he had done nothing wrong?
He was, in fact, a jogger, somebody who enjoyed and kept in shape through running.
Travis made a series of mental leaps
based on prior knowledge and a personal run in with AA
and Arbery ultimately got trapped in them. Arbery was not required to stop and speak with the two men who were threatening them.
How do you know they were threatening him? Why not stop and answer a question if JUST a jogger?
They felt, based on a series of judgments about neighborhood activities that saw ONLY young black male visitors to the construction site as a problem and discounted white visits,
so the white couple that went in with nothing and went out with nothing along with the little kids and nothing was reported missing after their images surfaced should be considered a problem because why?
that they had the right to chase and stop him while brandishing weapons. They didn't.
Are you not allowed to brandish a weapon during a Citizens Arrest?
If you believe that should this Black man go to jail for making this Citizens Arrest even though the white guy wanted to steal his car?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLjI6o1JJ1U&list=PLv7zcBPxDxVrMnjbpnVYppjS_pwgHYBQR&index=70&t=68sThat's how I'm seeing this.
You make some great points but I struggle with some of your other thoughts.
Here's a decent CNN story and video:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/24/us/georgia-ahmaud-arbery-killing-narrative/index.html