This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated June 5, 2020
George Floyd was slowly murdered in broad daylight over the course of nearly nine minutes — about three minutes of which he was completely unresponsive — while horrified onlookers pleaded for it to stop. A 17-year-old girl videoed it, frantically begging for George Floyd’s life, as he called out for his deceased mother to save him, but the bystanders were powerless to stop an officer from murdering a man in front of them.
We have seen so many cases where an unarmed person of color has been killed by an officer. George Floyd’s death was so egregious that there is an overwhelming consensus that it was murder. Even apologists who always default to looking for a reason to blame the victim and support officers have tended to agree there is no justification for what happened.
It took a nine-minute-long public execution for those who always look to excuse terrible misconduct to finally say this instance was a travesty. How can it be a surprise to anyone that those who have been screaming from the rooftops about this their entire lives, would react with much more outrage and anger?
Those of us who have not lived our entire lives with an underlying understanding that at any time you could become a target, need to do better. It is not enough to just say you are not racist. You need to actively oppose racism.
I know I won’t have to have the talk with my sons one day, that all black fathers have with their kids, where they tell them what they must do if they are ever approached by the police. But I will tell my sons about how some dads do have to have those talks and why.
The protests that have erupted in cities across the country have been simmering for a very long time. Hitting officers with bricks or looting local shops is unacceptable. Leaders of this movement make clear that those are not the protests they are organizing.
“Those of us who have not lived our entire lives with an underlying understanding that at any time you could become a target, need to do better. It is not enough to just say you are not racist. You need to actively oppose racism.”
It is very interesting how the reasoning of “a few bad apples” that is often used to say that not all cops are bad, doesn’t seem to apply to demonstrators.
If someone who had lost a loved one to murder, punched a hole in a wall at the funeral parlor where the wake was occurring, it would tell a lot about the priorities of anyone whose focus was on the wall. That doesn’t mean it is fine to damage that business’s property, but the overall situation puts the act in a different context.
There is a tremendous difference between saying, “George Floyd was murdered, but looting is wrong” and saying, “Looting is wrong, but George Floyd was murdered.” The order in which one presents the same two sentiments says everything about which they feel is more important: justice for a stolen life or property damage.
At an extremely tense time that calls for unity, there are those seeking to divide. Locally, some misrepresented social media posts to try and convince people that outsiders were organizing riots in Bay Ridge. It was all just a despicable attempt to prey on people being fearful and gullible, but what happened instead was a group of mostly young, local residents gathered for what could have been a masterclass on how to peacefully protest.
When President Trump wasn’t ignoring the mass demonstrations, he was tweeting that “vicious dogs” should be sicked on protesters and that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Both were clear references to police aggression toward peaceful civil rights protestors in the 1960s, with the latter being a quote from the racist police chief of Miami who threatened to shoot protesters.
Trump made a last-minute decision on Monday, June 1, that he would visit St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House. To clear a path for him, peaceful protesters were not asked to disperse, but rushed by law enforcement and tear-gassed.
Trump didn’t enter the church. He didn’t pray. He held up a bible upside-down, had his photo op, and then left, making it clear where his priorities are.
