The Names

There are so many names to remember now. Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. Philando Castile. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray. Botham Jean. Atatiana Jefferson. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd.

They’re all black people killed by police officers, or by yahoos who think they’re police, and in many cases, the perpetrators got off the hook. There are so many names that it’s easy to forget people. It’s easy for their stories to blur together. The list goes back much, much further in time than the names above. There will be more names in the future. There are always more names.

Last week, a white police officer knelt down on George Floyd’s neck and crushed his windpipe. Officer Derek Chauvin stuck a hand casually in his pocket while George Floyd cried out that he couldn’t breathe, cried for his mother, cried for mercy. The officers made jokes about this while the crowd begged them to stop. (Who do you call to report this when it’s the police doing it?)

These officers were fired immediately and should be arrested and charged with George Floyd’s death. They’re under investigation and hopefully that’s just for the FBI to get its ducks in a row before making arrests. It should be a short investigation because the facts are all right there on that profoundly horrifying video. These officers should no longer find work in any police department. Several of them have had discipline problems in the past. Most police officers are good people but these Minneapolis officers do not deserve to wear a badge among any of them.

This is why people march and say “Black Lives Matter”: Because some people need a reminder. Officer Chauvin apparently needed a reminder that George Floyd’s life mattered more than an alleged fake $20 passed at a deli. What a sick fucking joke.

I don’t have the answers to how to solve all this but empathy would help. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a non-white person but I try to have empathy. Black people must look at these people dying while going for a run or driving or doing whatever and see themselves or their children. Our son has to watch this shit on the news and God knows what goes through his head. That scares the hell out of me.

You can condemn the civil unrest in Minneapolis but a vandalized Target does not change the fact that that police officer knelt on George Floyd’s windpipe for nine minutes and ignored his cries for mercy. It does not change the fact that we have a major problem in America, and it just keeps happening.

More people need to speak out when people like George Floyd die senselessly, and it can’t just be black people speaking out. We can’t use the unrest as an excuse to dismiss the major problems behind the protests. Unfortunately, there are some people who wouldn’t give a shit about somebody like George Floyd anyway and with the unrest, they now have a convenient excuse not to give a shit. There are some people who will go apoplectic at the sight of a TV looted from Target but shrug when a guy dies with his head on the blacktop over a fake $20. There are some people who went volcanic with anger over Colin Kaepernick kneeling to protest police brutality but have no response when a man dies after a police officer kneels on his windpipe.

I don’t have any answers here, or much power, but speaking out when our fellow American citizens are killed in the street is something I can do.