04/06/2020
We continue our series - young people’s responses to the George Floyd killing in the USA. On Tuesday 2nd June the music and cultural community chose to be active through global silence. Now we are taking the torch, to continue the discourse, with responses from young people who feel deeply touched by the injustice and brutality and choose to speak up and share their thoughts because .
Today we have a thought-provoking and honest piece by Andrew:
Any number of things could have prevented the death of George Floyd. He went to buy ci******es just before his murder, he knew the store-owner, but he wasn’t in. Instead it was two of his employees. They sold him the ci******es and slightly later thought the note he’d given them was fake. If the store owner had been in, he could have probably gone and spoken to George and sorted it out. The employees went to his car and demanded the ci******es back, they didn’t get them so they decided to call the cops. The police transcript has them describing George as “drunk and not in control of himself” as of now there has yet to be any produced proof of this.
The initial arresting officers show up believing him to be drunk and disorderly they head over to the car and begin arguing with him. The officer by Georges window Thomas Lane decides to pull his gun on George. He tells George to put his hands on the wheel. Now just imagine how scared George is, he’s afraid for his life, one wrong move and the officer can just decide to erase his life.
After George complies, he puts the gun away. We don’t know what happens then, but you can imagine George is probably already pretty shaken by having death flashed at him. Eventually officer Lane drags George out of the car. You see George collapse down on the floor.
I can’t imagine how George felt at this moment, I personally suffer from panic attacks all the time, and they often make you feel as if you’re going to fall down like that, but it never actually happens. I can’t imagine how much fear that man must have been in, during that moment that he actually fell down.
Next they move George to the wall of a Chinese restaurant and let him sit down. The look on his face in the footage is uncomfortably upsetting. I’ve seen countless people get arrested, I’ve had some people arrested and I’ve never seen a face like that, it reminded me of a child’s face when it cries because something it doesn’t understand is happening.
Then they yank him back up and walk him across the street where he collapses again. They pick him up and slam him into the police car, this is when the third squad car parks up and our real criminal arrives.
We know that he was begging the cops not to put him in car, mentioning his claustrophobia. I can only imagine that this is magnified by the amount of stress and the state of panic he’s in. This is when he starts saying the now infamous line “I can’t breath”.
It’s unclear how he ended up on the floor in the end. Everything in that process is irrelevant though. I’ve been involved in countless altercations and struggles. I’ve had to restrain people many times.
Never once has it ever occurred to me to put my knee into the back of another mans neck and press down. I’m no Police officer though, of course Police officers receive training on how to safely restrain someone, and they know that restraining people in certain ways can lead to injury or death, this is why the hog tie was banned by pretty much every Police force in the world.
George Floyd was treated like a hunter’s trophy buck. While he begged for water, begged to be able to breath and begged for his mother who he knew was dead. The sickening look of pride on Officer Derek Chauvin’s face, the disinterested look of apathy on the other officer’s face’s says it all.
We all know what happened to George, the autopsy confirmed that in large part it was due to a lack of oxygen with a major cause being that Chauvin had his knee on Georges neck. The video of the events leading up to his death upset me in a way very few things have, but it was necessary to watch.
George Floyd could have lived very easily if an ounce of human decency had been present in any of the six officers involved in one mans arrest. The amount of officers itself a testament to a system of overbearing oppression squarely aimed at one group.
Black people have been and continue to be treated as second class citizens In America. Despite making up only 13% of Americas population, Black Americans are being killed by the police 2-3 times more than any other race, with the amount being unarmed being a further 5 times higher.
Since George’s death the amount of Black people sharing their stories and the systematic and social oppression they receive for no other reason then the fact that they are black is shocking. My father in law is British Caribbean and he has a similar story of being arrested for a minor offence, only to be arrested by several officers and nearly dropped on his head when he wasn’t even resisting.
I myself am a white man, I have every physical advantage you can have in this society, I’m also well spoken and educated. Part of this process is going to be people who have inherent advantages in society admitting to it, which I am doing. What Black people and members of other minority groups suffer in various parts of the world on a day to day basis is shocking to me because I have not and never will experience it.
A large response to Black Lives Matter has been that it should be ‘all lives matter’ instead. This is false, this is about systematic hatred towards a particular group of people, this is a specific issue aimed a specific people.
We’ve reached this point many times, people in general have had enough of this. Peaceful protests and activism sparked by a tragic abuse of power. Stephen Lawrence, Trayvon Martin and now George Floyd are just some of the deaths that have sparked this. Stephen Lawrence’s murder still haunts the British police force and seriously forced change. Similar cases in America though have failed to have long standing effects. Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman never served a day in prison and recently attempted to sue his victim’s family.
I hope with all my heart that this is the time where we as a collective refuse to give up and quiet down and see justice. With all of the involved former officers now fired and charged, it’s far from the end. It’s time to see proper accountability, this could be the meteor that shakes the balance of power forever. This is not the time to sit it out and wait quietly supporting change, as I and others have been guilty of in the past.
