It was just a week ago now that Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, pressed his left knee into the neck of George Floyd.
www.rollingstone.com
American Plague
Racism, our untreated pre-existing condition, is killing both black people and the nation itself
It was just a week ago now that Derek Chauvin, then still employed as a Minneapolis police officer, pressed his left knee into the neck of
George Floyd for what,
on video, seemed like an interminable amount of time. It was a total of
eight minutes and 46 seconds, nearly three minutes of which were after Floyd became unresponsive, long after pleadings like “Please, I can’t breathe” and “Mama” went silent.
Hennepin County’s district attorney, Michael Freeman, listed that precise timing in the criminal complaint he filed Friday. He
charged Chauvin, the only one of the four officers involved who authorities have arrested thus far,
with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. This move didn’t slow down the protests a bit, perhaps because they are about more than Floyd’s murder. Political strategist Patrisse Cullors, the founder of
Reform LA Jails and one of the co-originators of the Black Lives Matter movement, told
Rolling Stone after Chauvin’s arrest, “In order to have true accountability we must defund the police and redirect those dollars to a national health care system. We have prioritized an economy of violence and terror over
an economy of care.”
Cullors’ remark only underscored what a public-health crisis police violence remains. That was increasingly evident in the preliminary details from the county medical examiner’s autopsy, appearing at the end of Freeman’s complaint: “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.” (The Floyd family requested an independent autopsy, and
early findings released Monday contradicted the medical examiner. His homicide was the result of “asphyxia due to neck and blood flow to the brain,” with the weight placed on his back and his body positioning also being contributing factors.)
The one arrest was never going to stop the swelling rebellion against systemically racist and homicidal law enforcement in this country. But before arresting or charging any of the other three former officers for their culpability, the prosecutor counted the victim’s own health as an accomplice.
If we are to examine what and who killed
George Floyd, we have to talk about
racism, America’s pre-existing condition. It is a cultural pandemic that has been steadily killing this country and, indeed, rotting away the very idea of America since chattel slavery began
more than 400 years ago. Much like the people who were exploited for free labor in order to build this country, the cause of its death may have been more natural had racism not introduced certain comorbidities.
Right now, the coronavirus and the police are posing lethal threats to protesters. COVID-19 is still
killing black people disproportionately, at
about three times the rate of white people nationwide. The rates vary for police violence; black people in Minnesota are 20 percent of those killed by law enforcement, despite being only five percent of the population. Both the virus and the violence have also been weaponized against black folks in very public ways of late. How many people took risks with the virus on Memorial Day weekend,
carelessly disregarding the provably inordinate risk to black communities? How many then joined the protests this past week and actually claimed that they’re fighting for black survival? How many cops keep shooting tear gas at people during a pandemic that strikes at the lungs, giving a newly tragic resonance to “I can’t breathe”?
more...
www.politico.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
