Saturday, 30 May 2020

In Memory of George Floyd

It happened again, a few days ago the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin (though at least one other officer just stood there and watched it happen) in Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota appalled many. This is not a rare occurrence, immediately after the news became well known the families of many other victims of police murder -the majority of them African Americans- in the recent past came forward to share their accounts too.

This time however, the people of the Twin Cities had had enough and massive street demonstrations erupted which the police met with even more violence. Only this time the police over estimated their ability to beat and intimidate the population, they quickly lost control and by nightfall they had lost a precinct which burned into the night.

Solidarity protests have broken out across the United States, many of which are also being met with military style violence from the police and in some cases elements of the national guard and far right paramilitary groups.

At the time of writing this I know very little about the life of George Floyd apart from how it ended, so I have no idea if he was in fact an "angel" to use the measurement the American mass media likes to use when determining whether or not someone deserves to be killed by someone with a badge and a blue shirt. But I don't need to, because I don't support the ability of the police or any institutional force in society to take the life of anyone. And to seal the matter I have seen 48 seconds of George Floyd's life. In that 48 seconds officer Derek Chauvin has his knee pinning George Floyd to the floor, but this is not enough for him, he has to taunt, lecture and berate the man he has at his mercy, all the while ignoring George Floyd's pleas for air. Its pretty disgusting to watch, but it's important to see.

The video and other versions with more or less footage and obstructive watermarks aren't hard to find online. Since I am extremely remote from the United States, never mind the state of Minnesota, there's not much I can do beyond token gestures of support and sympathy. So I did what I have experience in and made another version of the video with a transcript for added clarity. I don't think there's any danger of this video being pulled from the web, especially now the state and federal government are scrambling to contain the fallout and doing a very poor job, but I hope it may find some use somewhere.

CONTENT WARNING Video of the Arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis [Transcription added]

Link https://youtu.be/RPaDAlGjxhI

Hard sub version on Internet archive https://archive.org/details/content-warning-video-of-the-arrest-of-george-floyd-in-minneapolis-transcription-added