I havent seen any posts mentioning it yet, i dont want the event itself and the movement it generated and bolstered to be forgotten.
For 8 minutes a servant of the government wedged his knee into the neck of george floyd until he died. For months and years after that, the people decried the injustice highlighted by floyds death but which take place everywhere, and resisted apathy, and fought and won meaningful changes to the system.
That murderous servant is now in a low security jail for the next 22 years, and has 22 stab wounds too.
The world implemented multiple changes to policy and culture following the black lives matter movement.
There is still too much inequality, too much instability, too many psychos masquerading as servants, but today is a day to be remembered, and a name and movement to not forget
George Floyd - Black Lives Matter - May 25 2020
I remember seeing on the news that there was a candlelight vigil in Iran to honor George Floyd. I still don’t fully understand why, but it made me look at it in a different light.
Also worth telling the story of Gerald Goines, the Houston police officer who was responsible for the 2019 Harding Street Raid, which was a no-knock drug raid that killed two innocent people and their dog. I remember hearing about it on the radio, and they talked about how there was an officer in the hospital with a gunshot wound and how everyone was praying for him.
Well, it turns out he was shot by friendly fire. And in all the chaos, Goines forgot to plant the drugs and left them in his trunk.
Even though there had to be a lot of officers involved, Goines, who is Black, took most of the heat. After he was arrested, they started sending out letters to all the people he’d arrested on drug charges before, letting them know that this had been a pattern and their cases could possibly be re-tried.
George Floyd was one of those people, but his letter arrived too late. So he was someone who had been failed by the system many times over the course of his life.