George Floyd, the Minneapolis African-American man who told police, “I can’t breathe” multiple times while former Officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on his neck for over 8 minutes before he died, has joined our country’s history, as the latest victim in a lynching of a Black man. But Floyd joins our history at a devastating moment.
It was announced this week that 100,000 Americans have now died due to COVID-19.
Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop – who was caught on a passerby’s phone appearing to have a depraved disregard for Floyd’s life as it drained away before our eyes and the millions around the world who have now seen the video – has been arrested as of today for third-degree murder after parts of Minneapolis – including a police precinct station – burned last night.
The 100,000 Americans who have died in just 4 months, died alone and nameless for the vast, vast majority of us. No one is demonstrating for their loss – except those patriotic white people who have been demonstrating at the beaches against all those unconstitutional restrictions we’ve all been suffering from under the thumbs of our commie masters in Sacramento.
Those mostly-all white “open her back up” protesters have been leading the charge against that fake virus – and now they can be happy. The beaches in San Diego County will be open next Tuesday, June 2! We can now go and sit and sun-bathe on the beach – as long as we’re with our household members – not somebody else’s.
As San Diego and the State of California – which, by the way, just had its 100,000 case of THE virus – rush back from the abyss of quarantine – and return to the former “normal” – all of a sudden, the death of George Floyd is a godsmack reminder that the old normal was an America where African-Americans and other peoples of color suffered daily from the injustices of an institutionalized racism so deep that it is ingrained in the very soul and fabric of the country.
That racism has also reared its head recently against our Asian-American brothers and sisters in the blame-game of who started the virus. There’s been a huge increase in hate incidents directed at them. And oh, Trump blamed China – again – today, just now, for not doing enough against the virus. Plus he announced we’ve leaving WHO, the World Health Organization right in the middle of a pandemic – because it’s controlled by China.
Yet, again, that old, former normal is not acceptable. A normal Trump and his “good people” want to return to. A normal when white people had unquestioned authority in everything. Where a white CNN reporter will go unharassed but the Black CNN reporter was arrested. Where a Black man jogging is gun-downed, or an African-American man bird watching is threatened by a call to the police by the woman he just busted for having her dog without a leash. Where a Black woman is arrested and thrown on the ground on the beach in Ocean Beach because her dog wasn’t on a leash.
Real patriots will no longer accept the harsh unfair, unconstitutional mis-treatment that Black people receive at the hands of every institution on hand. We will not allow this country to return to a normal that does not treat us all equal.
Those crowds in Minneapolis demonstrating for justice over George Floyds murder were very mixed. It wasn’t just African-Americans in the streets. There were white people Latinos, everybody – everybody’s incensed about this latest killing in broad daylight – and that long, long line of prior murders.
Demonstrators fighting for justice are not “thugs” as your white supremacist president claimed on tweeter last night, as he threatened to send in the military and shoot looters.
It is a strange, ugly confluence of events.
We reach 100,000 deaths – which Dr. Fauci warned us about back in March. We have all-white protesters claiming their constitutional rights have been destroyed by public health restrictions while demanding for a return to normal – of course, they sat on their hands and said nothing these last 3 and half years as Mr. Trump absolutely shredded the constitution. And we have George Floyd’s murder to remind us of what a “normal” America really is.
But, hey! Come Tuesday, our constitutional right to sit on the beach will be finally restored!
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
A cut:
…A partial study of such murders released several years ago at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrating that cop murders of unarmed Black people take place on average of one per day. I say partial because many districts make it a point to not report such murders. And how many of these murders end in the conviction of the killer cops? Less than a handful! A tiny few of the thousands of racist murderers are ever convicted. We list here just a handful of the Black victims of police murder to keep their memories alive as we continue to challenge the inherent racism in capitalist America.
Dontre Hamilton, Shot 14 times by a police officer in a Milwaukee park. The officer was responding to a call from employees at a nearby Starbucks alleging that Hamilton, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was disturbing the peace. Arriving officers first determined that Hamilton had committed no crime.
Eric Garner, Placed in an illegal chokehold by NYPD officers for 15 seconds for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. Garner said “I can’t breathe” 11 times as he was held down by several officers on a sidewalk.
Michael Brown, Shot and killed by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson.
John Crawford, Shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio. He was shopping and holding a toy BB gun (being bought for his son).
Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old mentally ill man, was shot three times, including once in the back, by a white police officer.
Dante Parker, father of five, died in police custody after being repeatedly stunned by a Taser in San Bernardino County
Tanisha Anderson, died after officers in Cleveland slammed her head on the pavement while taking her into custody.
Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was shot and killed by Cleveland police after officers mistook his toy gun for a real weapon.
Rumain Brisbon, was shot and killed by a Phoenix police officer who mistook a pill bottle for a weapon.
Akai Gurley, Shot and killed by a police officer while walking in a dimly lit New York City public housing stairwell with his girlfriend. New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton called the shooting an “accidental discharge.”
Jerame Reid, Shot and killed by police officers in Bridgeton, New Jersey. He was a passenger in a car driven by his friend, who was pulled over by police.
Tony Robinson, Killed by a Madison, Wisconsin police officer who was responding to reports of someone disrupting traffic.
And on March 13: Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot dead in her own apartment at one o’clock in the morning. Using a “no knock” warrant for a suspect who had already been apprehended, police broke down her door and fired 20 shots, eight hit Taylor.
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Now look up Army Spec. Sabrina Harman who posed over the corpse of Manadel al-Jamadi after he was tortured to death by CIA personnel. She was busted, a low-level sacrifice consisting of white trailer trash, but the murderer CIA guy wasn’t arrested for…torture and murder. Nor was his boss, Wbush and Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and all the rest like CIA Director Gina Haspell who must have just loved her job in those Black Sites to have been picked by Trump to…run the US Ministry of Torture & Assassination…just like our illustrious Secretary of State Pompous who so famously said that he was trained how to lie and cheat. And must we forget Pres. HWbush who also directed the murder squads. And the ‘Nobel Peace Prize’ President Obama who refused to investigate and bring them to trial for mass murder and war crimes…so it just goes on and on and over and over.
How short our memories are.
We live in a world where the Sadists rule. The worst possible people are in control of everything. The banks, the military, the politicians, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry, the judges, there is just no end to the list that one can think up. So here’s one for your Saturday reading:
A Few Good Sadists
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/29/a-few-good-sadists/
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Why do you think white wealthy racists who own the country invented ghettos and barrios? And have kept them thriving for 150 years after slaves were supposedly ‘set free,’ ummm?
Up here it’s the same but the skin color is different. Almond shape with a fold to their eyes, deep black hair…. Same as it ever was. Been a lot of that lately, hasn’t there?
sealintheSelkirks
Thank you Frank for putting this extreme contrast so clear, perfectly pointed out, THANK YOU. The petty inconvenience of such entitled public here compared to the lifelong degrading, dangerous, deadliness of bullying, mistreatment that minorities must swallow if they want to live long makes me ashamed to be white, ashamed that I ever whine about anything. While those people in Minn., Ferguson MO., and Wisconsin will only get change by voting, even that will require them to stand line in the cold for hours to share two or three voting machines with probably 1,000 other people. We couldn’t have it easier here, it’s as if we are another species. They can and do suffer and put up with shit that would absolutely crush average white people and soft white supremacists who demand and usually get everything they ever want!
CNN building in Atlanta & Police Precint #3 being trashed, set on fire are tiny events compared to the visual young blacks have in Minneapolis are inflicted with of a white cop holding a handcuffed grown black man’ to the ground with his knee on the man’s neck & head, degrading him so while not allowing him to breath! That cop & the others actions, as gross as Jeffrey Dahlmer’s, were/are allowed to fill the futures of these witnesses with horror. After they cry they must break, yell and smash to try to forget the disgusting sight. Not thugs, but exposure to such inhuman thuggish behavior by POTUS and what he called “good people” in Charlottesville, and NAVY torturer of prisoners and Chauvin must have a negative effect if it doesn’t kill one’s hope eventually.
Not to worry, the media and politicians are already very busy placing blame on Antifa and other organized protesters and outsiders for all the violence and destruction instead of the racist society they have created and support. They constantly blame only the “bad cops” while defending the “good cops”. You know all those “good cops” that just stand by, lie when they write their reports and do nothing to stop the “bad cops” from brutalizing the poor and people of color. It’s really not their fault at all it’s just the training they receive.
After doing some more information gathering, it turns out most of the violence and looting going on is instigated and done by the 3%ers movement. They are the ultra-right, with the stated motive to start a race war. CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News are confirming this. So when you see looters look how many are white before ya scream about black people destroying their own neighborhoods.
That’s a stretch to label the white protesters as the ultra-right. I drove by the La Mesa demo yesterday in solidarity and it was a hugely mixed crowd and I was proud of all the white people who had turned out in support of “Black Lives Matter” and for George Floyd. You’re falling into a blame game. Many of the mayors blamed “outside agitators.” Where have we heard that before? It was found that 80% of those arrested one night in Minneapolis were from … Minneapolis.
Go Frank: thank you for sounding out on this callous, brutal act! Where was this cops supervisor? Wonder how many other violent acts Chauvin perpetrated?
I believe and hope, that the vast majority of people on the planet are too enlightened to think that pigmentation of a person’s epidermis means &#%#@=/×@*#.
And anti semitism has increased tremendously.
Obey law enforcement people, it is just not that difficult.I have been a trained security professional for a few years, come onto my rental return lot at the airport with the intent to violate the law, I don’t car if you are trying to steal a tire, or trying to bed down for the night, I will give you a warning, then the cuffs and taser come out, no games,no bs, i have a uniform, i have a badge, and i have a job to do, and I will do my job up onto a citizens arrest,
Thank you, and may God bless America, a country of Laws.
You again, Hurl? I repeat what I said the last time, you are NOT law enforcement, you are a security guard. You have no right to use a taser on anyone and no security company would give you one. Your only legal weapon is a telephone to call actual law enforcement. I’d like to know who you work for so I could send them your comments.
I do believe he mentioned the Hertz lot at the airport once.
sealintheSelkirks
Thanks, seal, but I doubt that “jonny Hurl” is a real name.
As Frank states, “Its a strange, ugly confluence of events”, and the backlash and accelerated protests are patently long overdue. Covid is not the only pandemic, we have had a pandemic of political corruption, wealth inequality, social injustice, and healthcare issues for over a decade. To paraphrase Steinbeck, perhaps this will be The Summer of Our Malcontent. Following a second night of protests outside the WH, waiting to see the “unleashing of vicious dogs” as Trump threatens…
My heart breaks to hear that my daughter and her husband, a Black American, feel compelled to film their jogging outings, b/c if she pulls ahead of him, an onlooker will think its a black man chasing a white woman.
Having personally witnessed the horrifying, last vestiges of Jim Crow laws while growing up in Charleston SC, circa 1960, I am ashamed and heartsick that this is our culture now, 40 years later….
More into semitism that doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/281071
I hit the wrong key and my reply disappeared while I was still writing. Didn’t show up ‘under moderation’ so I guess it erased. Ah well…rewrite and try again. Letters to the editor from typewriters were so much more tedious decades ago so I maybe I shouldn’t complain!
I have a question: What is a ‘Forgery in Progress?’ Has anybody ever heard of that before? Armed with a pen? Threatening violence with a fake signature? Afraid for you life because of the paper cut possibility? Or always the fall-back reason for no charges filed: I thought it was a gun!
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retired botanist: I consider this the 10th 4-year term of the neoliberal/neocon Reagan Administration policies and politics both foreign and domestic. Still trickling down after 40 years of right wing corporate economic control and racial insanity as the wealthy Oligarchy continue to turn this country away from…the 1960s political awakening movements that tried to push this society towards intelligent thought and action. The disaster of St. Ronnie ‘Ray-Gun’ Reagan was forced on society by those that saw their power diminishing with the changes that were happening even through Pres. Ford and Carter administrations after we got rid of Nixon. And instead, this country morphed into..or probably more accurately fell off a cliff backwards down the mountain to what we’ve got now. A right wing violent racist Alzheimer’s President to a right wing violent Dementia President…I mean, where’s the progress, the evolution into that better world?
I guess it would be appropriate to say the ‘bad old days’ never went away, just retreated for a bit. Maybe well covered over, hidden from plain sight back in the shadows, but what we still have are violent racist police and politicians in a State run by an Oligarchy of wealth intent on not only increasing their power and control but forever gaining more wealth while doing it. Even if it impoverishes the rest of the humans they share this planet with. Or destroys the finite biosphere in pursuit of always more.
Which is what we started to realize it was all about in the 60s…and were brutally crushed. I find it the epitome of Irony when one thinks about just exactly which political persuasion was essentially correct in their thinking about the need for radical change needed and left undone, where it would lead. The beaten and murdered protesters!
Well, here we are. In the Future. And I’ve been called a Pessimist on this site! Ahahahaha!
Reality proves that comedian Lily Tomlin was entirely correct in her assumptions of the spread between cynicism and reality, and how being cynical can never keep up with the reality of aberrant human behavior in reality.
Remember that taped private conversation between Reagan and Nixon where you can hear them talking about the ‘monkeys who don’t even know how to properly wear shoes”…the “send them all back to Africa” crap? Now we have the latest incarnation of Saint Ronnie in the form of the bloated Trump wanting ‘his’ troops to shoot to kill and his Brownshirt brigades to attack people exercising that Constitutional ‘temporary privilege’ to publicly protest… But of course one needs a government permit to protest said government that either doesn’t follow its own laws or re-writes the one they don’t like to favor themselves and/or those who control it.
Big sigh. Wow. Just wow.
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jonny Hurl: A nation of laws? How does that work again? You’ve never read much history, have you? Missed civics class or are you from one of the US schools that don’t bother to have teachers teaching a real Civics class? Why do you have to learn to drive to be able to drive but don’t have to learn anything about your government and its sordid history to be able to vote? Can you answer that, dude?
Remember that the Soviet Union was a nation of laws. And Nazi Germany was a nation of laws. And Chile under Gen. Pinochet was a nation of laws. And the Saud Family owned Arabia is a nation under laws. And Iran and…well not Iraq and Afghanistan and Honduras since the US has recently destroyed those countries and they don’t have laws anymore, just total mayhem instead. But hey, who do you think WRITES the damn laws? Those that have the power to enforce it through their bought & paid for proxies like politicians and the legion of hucksters calling themselves ‘Lobbyists.’ All about power, and keeping it.
You sound like those men that sat in the dock in Nuremberg. ‘I was only following orders’ and ‘It was the LAW’ they cried, as if that gave justification for their brutality and violence. Well Mr. Taser dude, read what a REAL LAWMAN acts like:
‘I Took the Helmet Off and Laid the Batons Down’: Michigan Sheriff and Police Didn’t Disperse Their Town’s Protest—They Joined It
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/05/31/i-took-helmet-and-laid-batons-down-michigan-sheriff-and-police-didnt-disperse-their
And as for your tired horribly misused and thoroughly incorrect “god bless” refrain, Jesus didn’t listen to corrupt ‘law enforcement’ sadists either, now did he? But then I’m afraid, based on your statements, that you are probably just fine with the thought of those Roman law enforcement officers killing the Prince of Peace who stood up to their injustice because…after all, he didn’t “Obey law enforcement people, it is just not that difficult.”
I guess Jesus did chose to not obey the laws and deserved what he got, eh jonny? I guess that god bless just might mean something different that unquestioning obedience to authority. Think on that one for a bit.
sealintheSelkirks
Useful trivia: On this date in 1927, Donald Trump’s father was arrested at a KKK rally.
sealintheSelkirks
Well, I read up on this, seal, and you are correct. But, none of the information said what he was doing. There was no solid account of him being a KKK marcher, there was a riot and he was one of seven arrested but he wasn’t charged. Believe me, I am not defending any part of the t-rump family, but, unless you have some better information, I think this kind of innuendo, as delightful as it sounds, is more akin to their tactics and we don’t need to stoop that low. But, if you have something solid, I’d love to see it.
It was not a KKK rally, it was the annual Memorial Day parade in Queens County NY. The Klan had been denied marching rights, and they crashed the parade. This lead to a “riot” where the populace assaulted the hooded thugs (needed to vent with a bit there). Fred was arrested along with a few other locals and five KKK members (his charge was later dropped: “failure to disperse”). I agree with Geoff on this one.
Good point, Peter, it was not a KKK rally, that is equally important to the perception created by seal’s trivia. I don’t think he did it on purpose, maybe just too quickly.
Oho! So Donald Trump just somehow ‘became’ the racist thug he is AFTER he ‘grew up’ (a debatable concept in itself) and left the wealthy household of his radical evil slumlord of a father that had a song written about him by folksinger Woodie Guthrie in the Depression times? Must have turned racist when lil Donnie was at the Wharton School of Business where one of his well-known professors labeled him the “dumbest student I ever had” I guess, eh? Nothing but flowers and good will towards all black people when he was a child maybe? Since being a golden spoon out of every orifice son and the (likely) skin color of the servants before he went off to college had nothing to do with his obvious extreme racism, it must have been college that taught him to hate. Yes?
Do you really think the cops and judges in Queens County, NY in 1927 when blacks were being lynched all over the country (and remember Rosewood Florida was burned to the ground just 4 short years earlier), were going to keep jailed a wealthy white property owner with obvious influence in powerful local circles of other rich white men? Give me a break!
It’s the same crap as a decade and a half later when Wall St. banker Prescott Bush had his bank closed down for ‘aiding and abetting the enemy’ in October of 1942 (just making money and sending supplies for Hitler) and didn’t GO TO JAIL and became a freaking Senator and gave birth to Pres. HW Bush and W Bush both who seemed to have turned out rather…Fascist as adults in behavior and policy.
Come on, guys! The entire Trump clan, from illegal immigrant Austrian Grandpa who left his home country to avoid the draft and ran prostitutes in San Francisco because Austria didn’t let him come home, to the current Trump, have always been just a bunch of wealthy corrupt sociopaths who get away with what they do because they are rich. That’s it, that’s all it takes, lots and lots of money and power and ‘favors owed’ and who you know and what you know about those other wealthy wheeler-dealers that you can use to manipulate them….
Racism is learned at home, among the adults you grow up under who teach THEIR VALUES to their young, and the heavy pressure of socializing culture and religion that impresses upon your forming mind about what is acceptable and unacceptable. It is freaking learned behavior! One that is very very hard to un-learn. It becomes a form of PTSD with the same kind of hardwired triggers that sets off the Amygdala in the brain that short-circuits the cognitive functions with overwhelming emotional responses.
And honestly, I don’t think the Wharton School of Business taught this. But then again, maybe it did.
sealintheSelkirks
I was only referring to a specific piece of information you offered, seal. I don’t doubt the racism of the whole family. I simply prefer verifiable information to innuendo as being completely honest. From what I read, despite many people digging into this story, no one was able to verify that he was a KKK member or was culpable of anything.
“a jailed a wealthy white property owner?” He was only 22 years old when this happened, how rich was he?
You said: “Donald Trump’s father was arrested at a KKK rally”
I said you were wrong on that point.
That exchange had nothing to do with how much I loathe both Fred and “tiny balls” Donnie.
Geoff, how rich was lil Donnie at 22? Inherited wealth? Since his father just a handful of years later became known as a horrible slumlord during the 30s Depression I would guess he wasn’t washing dishes in a restaurant somewhere, ya know?
Peter, wrong on that point. Maybe he was fighting against the KKK crashing the parade when he refused to disperse? Not likely but it is a possibility I guess.
Back to the point of this article:
The Second Longest War in the United States
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/01/the-second-longest-war-in-the-united-states/
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‘Toxic Culture’ of Police Departments Decried After 57 Buffalo Officers Resign in Support of Two in Unit Who Attacked Elderly Man
“So is 57 officers resigning at once just a few bad apples?”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/05/toxic-culture-police-departments-decried-after-57-buffalo-officers-resign-support
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Why Hasn’t Amy Cooper Been Arrested? The Case of Pink Pussy Privilege
https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-hasnt-amy-cooper-been-arrested-case-pink-pussy-privilege
sealintheSelkirks