George Floyd could not breathe. We must fight police violence until our last breath

The Minnesota police department that killed George Floyd has been violent and racist since its inception. Can we really have faith in reform?

Derecka Purnell Wed 27 May 2020

Photograph: Craig Lassig/EPA

‘Why have we dismissed police abolition as a viable option for a transformative society?’ 

White police officer Derek Chauvin pinned George Floyd to the concrete as he hollered that he could not breathe. George screamed. Screamed for his mother. Screamed for his breath. For his life.

For many watching the footage, George’s cries echoed Eric Garner’s “I can’t breathe.” New York police department officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Garner a couple of weeks before a Ferguson police officer killed Michael Brown. George’s plea reminds me of another black man shot by police: Eric Harris. In 2015, Tulsa reserve deputy Robert Bates told Harris “fuck your breath”. That same year, Fairfax county law enforcement tased Natasha McKenna four times while she sought help during a mental health crisis. As they were brutalizing her, she said, “You promised you wouldn’t kill me.” For me, the image of the white officer kneeling into George’s back reminds me most of Freddie Gray. Baltimore police severed Gray’s spine through an intentional rough ride in the back of a police van.

George, like Dreasjon Reed, Breonna Taylor and other black people killed by police this year, should be alive and breathing. This cycle – murder, protest, calls for justice, non-indictments – is revelatory. We must join others to reduce police power before, during and after these viral killings. Police reform is not enough. We need abolition.

In recent years, news stories broke about how Immigrations and Customs Enforcement use raids, detentions and deportations to threaten immigrants in the US. Calls to “Abolish Ice” could be heard from the streets to the halls of Congress. Ironically, there were no calls to have more Latino and black Ice agents. Mayors did not call for community-driven deportation or raids, like we see for community policing. Non-profits did not call to strengthen relationships between border patrol and immigrants; cities did not fund Ice and ice-cream trucks to pass out treats to immigrant children. Liberals did not point out that there were good apples and bad apples in border patrol enforcement. These programs cannot reform Ice, nor can they reform police.

If we can understand that the calls to abolish Ice actually means that this country needs a new, transformational immigration system, then why dismiss police abolition as a viable option for a transformative society?

One major difference is the mainstream narrative around dreamers: immigrants hoping for a better life and fleeing persecution and violence in their homeland. To be clear, the fight for immigrant justice is crucial and inseparable from the fight against racial police violence. Immigrants, especially undocumented black immigrants, are vulnerable to police violence and face the risk of prison, deportation and death. Yet black Americans, like indigenous and First Nations people, represent particular reminders that white settlers looted land, committed genocide and enslaved people to build a democracy. As a result, black and indigenous bodies remain a public nuisance to be disappeared, exploited, imprisoned and killed by white people and police alike. They want us to live in constant fear of those possibilities for a reason. Thus, black resistance matters, against police and white supremacy alike.

Abolitionist organizers in Minnesota are informed by a history of resistance that dates back to 1867 when the Minneapolis police department was first formed to surveil black people and Native Americans. Since then, MPD has murdered or beaten black people “savagely” for acts ranging from inviting white women to a dance to refusing to “move on”. Per a report by MPD150, the Minneapolis police department has garnered several accolades over time, including the nation’s most homophobic police department at one point. In recent memory, officers in the city arrested black people at rates 10 times higher than white people for the same offenses.

After a Minneapolis police department officer shot and killed Jamar Clark in 2015, activists occupied their local police department for more than two weeks. This activism spurred organizing that continued after the cameras went away. Through struggle, organizations like MPD150 and Reclaim the Block pushed the mayor and city council to shift more than $1m from police departments to communities. Unquestionably, this organizing since 2015 influenced the mayor’s unprecedented decision to ensure that the police chief fired all four officers responsible for George Floyd’s killing, almost immediately after it happened.

The story is not over. On Tuesday night, MPD teargassed and shot rubber bullets at protesters who took to the streets to decry the murder. The fact that residents were willing to risk their lives during a global pandemic to protest against this injustice demonstrates that the race is not given to the swift nor the strong, but to the organizers who resist until the end.

Derecka Purnell is a movement lawyer, activist and Guardian US columnist.



George Floyd killing: sister says police officers should be charged with murder
Floyd was killed by police in incident captured on video, where an officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes as he lay on the ground


Joanna Walters in New York
@Joannawalters13

Wed 27 May 2020 16.05 BSTFirst published on Wed 27 May 2020 13.30 BS


The sister of George Floyd, the black man killed by police in Minneapolis after an incident captured on video in which an officer knelt on his neck as he lay on the ground, has called for those involved in his death to be charged with murder.

Bridget Floyd said on Wednesday morning that the officers, who were fired on Tuesday, “should be in jail for murder”.

George Floyd, 46, died on Monday. The FBI and authorities in Minnesota have launched investigations into his death. The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck is white.

Bridget Floyd struggled to hold back tears as she spoke to NBC’s Today show about the family’s shock and grief.

She said: “Me and my family are taking this very, very hard. It’s very heartbreaking, it’s very disturbing.”

Huge protests took place in Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Police in riot gear fired teargas and rubber bullets into the crowd.

In the footage that emerged of Floyd’s violent detention, he can be heard to shout “I cannot breathe” and “Don’t kill me!” He then becomes motionless, eyes closed, face-first on the road.

On Tuesday evening, the mother of Eric Garner condemned Floyd’s killing. Garner was killed in New York City in July 2014 by a police officer who placed him in an illegal chokehold.

Gwen Carr said: “I was horrified to learn about the death of George Floyd, and to hear him utter the same dying declaration as my son Eric. I offer my deepest condolences to the Floyd family, and I stand with them in their fight to get justice for George.”

She said: “It’s painful but true that black lives continue to be destroyed by police officers in many communities across our country. They keep killing us. and it’s the same story again and again.”

Garner’s death became a focal point for national conversations on race and policing and Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US.

Play Video
1:34 Minneapolis police fire teargas at protesters after death of George Floyd – video

On Wednesday, a fresh video clip emerged showing officers initially wrestling Floyd out of his car. The footage, broadcast by local station KMSP, shows the police trying to handcuff and arrest Floyd.
Alex Lehnert(@AlexLehnertFox9)

New video sent to us shows the moment George Floyd was removed from his vehicle and handcuffed on 38th and Chicago.
Video courtesy of Christopher Belfrey pic.twitter.com/MiIIula4sAMay 26, 2020

Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who spoke alongside Bridget Floyd on Wednesday, said additional video footage “which hasn’t been seen yet” by the public or the authorities had been sent to him by other bystanders and from business surveillance cameras.

Crump said that in some ways, the use of “violent, lethal and excessive force” on Floyd was more disturbing than the treatment of Garner, even, because the officer is seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck for up to nine minutes.

“Nine minutes, while he was begging to breathe and begging for his life,” Crump told Today.

He said he hoped the killing would be a tipping point for the fairness of the US justice system.

“There cannot be two justice systems, one for black America and one for white America.”

Bridget Floyd said the firing of four officers, whose names have not been released, needed to be followed with stronger action.


She said: “I would like for these officers to be charged with murder, because that’s exactly what they did. They murdered my brother. He was crying for help.”

Leading athletes, including LeBron James, Lewis Hamilton and Colin Kaepernick, have expressed their anger and grief over the death of George Floyd.

James, who has spoken out against police brutality in the past, compared the police officer’s stance during the killing of Floyd with Colin Kaepernick’s peaceful protest in 2016, during which he knelt during the national anthem, sparking a wave of similar action in solidarity across different sports to highlight racial injustice and related incidences of police brutality in the US.