-By Warner Todd Huston
On the night that the George Zimmerman trial verdict was released, Cyrus Massoumi got a little more than he bargained for when he asked a group of African Americans in Oakland, California what they thought of the results from Florida.
Massoumi was out and about on Saturday evening after the verdict was read and asked a few people on the streets in San Francisco for their reaction to the trial. In every case Massoumi found engagement, not anger, and certainly not violence.
But in Oakland that all changed when he came across a group of three or four African Americans standing on the street.
Massoumi and a friend (who was recording the encounters) asked the men what they thought of the trial. All were very negative about the outcome. Massoumi then tried to engage further noting that Zimmerman had the “stand your ground” rule on his side.
But instead of further discussion, the men immediately began to throw punches getting Massoumi on the ground before running off.
In an exclusive interview with me, Massoumi says that the video shows nearly all of his encounter with the men. Only a few seconds before was missed by the videographer.
“There was no earlier confrontation, we just asked the question and they suddenly started swinging,” Massoumi said. “We weren’t even trying to be confrontational. We were just looking for people’s honest reactions.”
**UPDATE**
This video has been removed from Youtube. If I ever find out why, I’ll let you all know.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.