https://time.com/5847667/story-behind-george-floyd-time-cover/
https://time.com/5847487/i-cannot-sell-you-this-painting-artist-titus-kaphar-on-his-george-floyd-time- cover/
Friday, June 5, 2020
Where is Kaep's Apology?
Everything is meaningless and falls on deaf ears until there is a formal apology to Colin Kaepernick.
We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter. #InspireChange pic.twitter.com/ENWQP8A0sv
— NFL (@NFL) June 5, 2020
The History of Lynchings
An excerpt from the NY Times -
Art That Confronts and Challenges Racism: Start Here
Our writers suggest works that illuminate and tackle issues of police brutality, social injustice and racial inequity.
By Melena Ryzik, Wesley Morris, Mekado Murphy, Reggie Ugwu, Pierre-Antoine Louis, Salamishah Tillet and Siddhartha Mitter
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice,
the Alabama museum dedicated to the history of lynching.
Credit...Robert Rausch for The New York Times
Artists and thinkers have already shown us how: Bryan Stevenson, the crusading lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has a memoir, and a movie based on it, “Just Mercy,” that is attracting a new audience, alongside the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Alabama museum dedicated to the history of lynching, which embodies his life’s work. The filmmaker Ava DuVernay made the documentary “13th,” about the roots of mass incarceration, and has long been boosting independent black voices with her distribution company Array. Here, writers recommend other works that illuminate and confront racism, tracing a path, thorny as it may be, forward. MELENA RYZIK
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/arts/racism-writings-books-movies.html?searchResultPosition=1
Mayor of DC Painted the Street - Love her!
#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/OQg6977n5r
— Muriel Bowser #StayHomeDC (@MurielBowser) June 5, 2020
From Rolling Stone -
Street in Front of White House Officially Renamed ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’
“Black Lives Matter” also painted on the street leading up to the president’s residence
By BRENNA EHRLICH
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/black-lives-matter-plaza-1010752/
What We Have To Do
@skoodupcam Jus some unwritten rules my mom makes me follow as a young black man ##fyp ##blacklivesmatter
♬ original sound - marcappalott
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Police Have a License to Kill Provided by the Supreme Court
An excerpt from USA Today -
Police act like laws don't apply to them because of 'qualified immunity.' They're right.
There's a legal obstacle that's nearly impossible to overcome when police officers and government officials violate our constitutional and civil rights.
By Patrick Jaicomo and Anya Bidwell
On Monday, May 25, Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. While two officers pinned the handcuffed Floyd on a city street, another fended off would-be intervenors, as a fourth knelt on Floyd’s neck until — and well after — he lost consciousness.
But when Floyd’s family goes to court to hold the officers liable for their actions, a judge in Minnesota may very well dismiss their claims. Not because the officers didn’t do anything wrong, but because there isn’t a case from the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court specifically holding that it is unconstitutional for police to kneel on the neck of a handcuffed man for eight minutes until he loses consciousness and then dies.
And such a specific case is what Floyd’s family must provide to overcome a legal doctrine called “qualified immunity” that shields police and all other government officials from accountability for their illegal and unconstitutional acts.
The Supreme Court created qualified immunity in 1982. With that novel invention, the court granted all government officials immunity for violating constitutional and civil rights unless the victims of those violations can show that the rights were “clearly established.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/30/police-george-floyd-qualified-immunity-supreme-court-column/5283349002/
Black Girl Magic @ MIT
An excerpt from CNN -
MIT elects first black woman student body president in its 159-year history
By David Williams
Danielle Geathers will be the president of the Undergraduate Association at MIT
where about 6 percent of the graduates are black and 47 percent women, according to the school.
Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have elected a black woman as president of the Undergraduate Association for the first time in the school's history.
Danielle Geathers and running mate Yu Jing Chen won the student government election earlier this month.
Geathers just finished her sophomore year at MIT and is majoring in mechanical engineering. She served as the diversity officer last year.
"In terms of coming from that diversity space and being focused on promoting equity across MIT, it would kind of be important to have someone in the President's role who's focused on that," she said.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/mit-black-woman-student-president-trnd/index.html
The Added Burden of Keeping Up Appearances
An excerpt from Medium -
Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is….A Lot
I just witnessed the lynching of a black man, but don’t worry Ted, I’ll have those deliverables to you end of day.
By Shenequa Golding
Between Amy Cooper’s Oscar worthy Central Park performance, Ahmaud Arbery shooting death in Georgia, Breonna Taylor’s assassination inside her Louisville home, and the Minneapolis murder of George Floyd, black people in America are running on fumes.
We’re tired, angry, confused and yet, this space is familiar to us. This place of torment and trauma has become a home of sorts. The cycle begins in the far corners of Twitter with rumblings of a killing. Then a recording of the victim’s last moments pop up and shortly after, we finally learn the person’s name.
A new name to add to a growing list no one wants to be part of.
Sparks of outrage, disgust and bewilderment soon follow. Maybe a protest happens, and in the case of Floyd, uprisings. Men and women ballooned with righteous anger take to the streets to make their presence known; to scorch earth and shout from the pits of their belly to the top of their lungs that their lives matter. Whether the powers that be hear or acknowledge their chants is one thing, but it’s the community formed by the injustice of another black death that acts as a temporary solve.
And while some of us take to the streets, the rest of us have to hide these shared feelings behind professionalism.
https://medium.com/@shenequagolding/maintaining-professionalism-in-the-age-of-black-death-is-a-lot-5eaec5e17585
NETFLIX Supports BLM
To be silent is to be complicit.
— Netflix (@netflix) May 30, 2020
Black lives matter.
We have a platform, and we have a duty to our Black members, employees, creators and talent to speak up.
HULU Supports Black Lives
We support Black lives. Today, and every day. You are seen. You are heard. And we are with you.
— Hulu (@hulu) May 31, 2020
Pushed to the Edge
An excerpt from the LA Times -
Op-Ed: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge
By Kareem Abdul-Jabar
What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck while Floyd croaked, “I can’t breathe”?
If you’re white, you probably muttered a horrified, “Oh, my God” while shaking your head at the cruel injustice. If you’re black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, “Not @#$%! again!” Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn’t for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store’s video showed he wasn’t. And how the cop on Floyd’s neck wasn’t an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.
Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming the black man who asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black Yale University grad student napping in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a white student. Because you realize it’s not just a supposed “black criminal” who is targeted, it’s the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.
You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops.
What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you’re white, you may be thinking, “They certainly aren’t social distancing.” Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, “Well, that just hurts their cause.” Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, “That’s putting the cause backward.”
You’re not wrong — but you’re not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness — write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change — the needle hardly budges.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-30/dont-understand-the-protests-what-youre-seeing-is-people-pushed-to-the-edge
Saturday, May 30, 2020
We Keep Reliving the Same Nightmare
I've included a snippet, but this article is too good to cherry-pick. I hope you'll have the time to read it in its entirety.
A lynching without a rope — and in America, that’s nothing new
It used to be racist mobs. Now it’s racist cops. Watch Donald Trump pivot from 100,000 dead to "law and order"
By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Today, in 2020, it's George Floyd in Minneapolis, killed by a police officer kneeling on his throat during an arrest for the alleged offense of "forgery." Cell phone cameras captured the whole thing. Images of a handcuffed black man lying face-down on the street, under the knee of a white police officer, quickly flew around the world. Rioting broke out on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Stores were looted. Buildings burned. Early on Friday morning, fires burned at the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis, where the four officers present at the death of George Floyd were assigned.
But long before there were cell phone cameras, there were black men and black boys, and there were cops who beat them or killed them, and there were riots in the streets of cities where the killings took place. What followed was as predictable as it was pathetic. Governors issued lamentations and called for "understanding" and "unity." Stores and buildings destroyed during the rioting were rebuilt. Occasionally, official "commissions" were empaneled to "study" the cause of the violence, and lame pledges were made that we've got to do better.
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/30/a-lynching-without-a-rope--and-in-america-thats-nothing-new/
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