For a moment, George Floyd’s murder changed everything. Those days are gone.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/25/george-floyd-racism-backlash/73548393007/

39 comments

  1. I remember crying a lot those days, and thinking nothing would ever be the same. And here we are with the Dow topping 40,000 and everything IS the same. Nothing has changed, and we’re about to possibly elect a white supremacist as president, AGAIN.

  2. Not gone. Just smoldering. Waiting for the right spark to come along.

    What is odd, at least to me, is that campus around the US aren’t all worked up over something they can change.

    Like minority rights in America.

    Why is Gaza more important than the killing of our own?

  3. I remember him crying out for his mom. That was absolutely brutal and heart breaking. This mother fucker just would not stop applying pressure on his neck and back for what felt like an eternity

    Then yesterday someone said that he overdosed on drugs. I had to read their comment several times because I thought they must be talking about something else. They weren’t. This person actually meant and believed that George Floyd died of a drug overdose

  4. Floyd’s killer was tried and sent to prison just like any other murderer. That system kind of worked like it was supposed to. If his killer had gotten away with it, then there would still be a problem, but justice prevailed.

  5. It just doesn’t seem like it’s possible in this country to have effective law enforcement that isn’t oppressive and draconian. We’re not willing to seriously reform it out of fear of crime. We’re just supposed to accept people being tortured, like in Fontana lately, by police as a price for “freedom” from crime.

    Apparently no other type of policing can possibly exist, perhaps because of how deep the police are tied in with power structures in this country. Political and wealthy elites certainly don’t want police power limited at all. They need the police for arresting a bunch of college protestors.

  6. If you want insight into how not only has nothing changed, but it’s gotten worse. Look at what Eric Adams has been doing in NYC.

    Cop city all over again. We’re about to spend a billion dollars on NYPD OT this year, the same year one libraries are closing on weekends due to lack of budget.

  7. It’s like Occupy Wall Street, another squandered opportunity of activist energy via vague decentralized leaderless movements that become bogged down in arguing for unpopular policy (like “defund the police”) rather than more pragmatic reforms and effective political lobbying. Will people do better the next time, or will the same mistakes be made the next time such an incident generates more activist energy? Do activists really *want* to change anything, or do they just want to be mad?

  8. Here’s the most frustrating thing to me. There was an opportunity to see Floyd as a catalyst for positive widespread change in our police force. Something that reached beyond race. But instead it was warped into a battle of politics and has yeilded only more societal devision.

    Now I’m looking at the Thomas Perez Jr situation and I’m just saddened that the corruption and immunity from consequences persists as much as before. It’s like we’ve learned nothing, and changed nothing.

  9. The article is well worth the read but ultimately its a tale of how and why leftism fails in the US.

    Leftism relies on a constant oppressor and oppressed power struggle and that is fucking exhausting to average people. Nothing gained or solved is ever enough, the power dynamic just finds a new aspect within the issue or an entirely new struggle to use as fuel. There is always something leftist are demanding average people to be outraged over.

    To make things worst the constant escalation often gives rise to the competition and demands of purity. Purity not only creates an ‘eat their own’ scenario it also seeks to cast anyone who doesn’t lockstep to be labeled a bigot/similar.

    In the broader society this use of labels as a weapon against of anyone who disagrees creates a massive ‘FUCK YOU’ backlash where the labels lose value leading to a Tucker Carlson name-calling monologue which seeks to check out of any/all further discussions or an Andrew Breitbart monologue that seeks to aggressively pushback against and triumphs things like Supreme Court knocking down affirmative action admissions policies used to diversify college campuses; Republican-led legislatures stamping out Black history courses in public education; and extinguished diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)

    Politicians are not bastions of integrity, many just bandwagon issues and movements for their own gains and when the ride starts to slow, most jump off and stop giving lip-service.

  10. George Floyd’s death did not change anything for at least half of America. In fact, roughly half of America most likely wishes they could have personally knelt on his neck themselves!

  11. The socio/economic American body politic has drowned in apathy and self interest. If an entire kindergarten class or grade school class can be slaughtered by armed lunatics and NOT change anything what’s George Floyd’s murder going to solve or change?

    Embetterment in the US is now $ signs – the more, the merrier. Be it individual or corporate, as long as I got it good…well the rest can simply move along. It’s basically “not in my back yard, thank you” and the willfully ubiquitous glance the other way when it doesn’t affect your pocketbook or jaded sensibilities feigning as concern, thoughts or prayers.

    You want those heady days of hope, anticipation and a dazzling future? You’d do better by practicing your 1000 stare and swallowing that huge horse pill of disappointment. Why? Because someone, somewhere, in a town near you is just itching to rip off the scab to the wound that doesn’t heal.

  12. I worked for the province of Ontario in social services. After George Floyd’s murder, many promises were made.

    Three years ago I received an email I believed to be racist from a manager. I reported it. No investigation. I grieved it. My date was set for Jan 2023.

    They fired me without cause and without notice Dec 2022. The arbitration may be finished by 2025.

    If governments wanted change, they would change. Empty promises mean nothing.
    Edit: spelling

  13. The problem is that it got a lot of attention, which led to organizing, which led to bad actors doing what they do best and the media there to capture every minute.

    All it did was give the right fuel for their hypocritical justifications. Even today when Jan 6 is brought up, the first defense is to bring up the George Floyd riots and how the left can’t stay consistent on violence and unrest.

  14. I remember that one entire day where my cop-loving borderline dick-riding stepmother pretended to give a fuck in the immediate aftermath. It didn’t last because it couldn’t last because people who are already on the side of the police from the outset are literally incapable of change I guess

  15. Have y’all seen on Twitter/ X. Biden marked the four year anniversary of George Floyd’s death. The comment section was so miserable. Full of people MAGA or not who said “good riddance” and his life didn’t mean shit.

  16. If it only lasted the literal one moment, it didn’t really “change everything”, did it?

  17. G.F.’s death has resulted in chokeholds being banned nationally for safety holds that don’t crush ribs. It has also compelled retail chains to slowly phase out cash because this all started with a counterfeit $20 he used. Say what you want about the greater demands for depolicing, but this one thing has already saved thousands of lives and the latter saves lots of Co2 emissions inherent to cash processing.

    That said, the police opposition era is over. Trump isn’t President and the police are needed to stop right-wing terrorists from committing violence against innocent people. De-policing ended the moment Biden was elected.

  19. Did it really change anything? History just keep repeating itself.

  20. They said the same exact sh!t after the election of President Obama. I believe the term flying around was “a post-racial” country … and just look at us now 👀

  21. It was a few days, maybe a week.

    Immediately after his murder, my dad was on board with police reform. My far right cousin and his wife were talking about how racism might still be a problem.

    And then the right wing media machine solidified around the narrative that George Floyd deserved it, and Republicans went from “maybe cops are assholes” to “he tried to pass a fake 20, execution is a legitimate punishment for that”.

    A lot of people did their “white moderate” song and dance routine that Dr. King lamented, and did nothing else.

  22. Time to burn the confederate flag on social media posting it to the racists out there as a warning.

    More work needs to be done.

  23. >”There was an opportunity here and across the country to enact change in many areas, long-lasting change,” Crudup told USA TODAY. But “I feel like we really missed an opportunity to do that. … All of the talk was really just that ‒ a lot of talk.”

    Same could be said about many tragedies and occurrences in America.

  24. Back when I was on Facebook I would argue a lot over the police murdering people, and this was before Eric Garner. After Garner was murdered, and a lot of my liberal friends would talk about “police needing to be safe” and “did I want more cops to die?” I gave up.

    The fact that these murders keep happening and no one seems to care has broken a piece of me and I don’t know that I can ever be completely whole. If it weren’t for my family I would light myself on fire at the steps of a police station. I’m afraid everyday for my grandson and if anything ever happens to him I don’t know what I will do.

  25. 2020 in general felt like a missed opportunity to actually have change. The fact that we literally just returned to the status quo is infuriating and basically sets us up for something even worse the next time a 2020-like scenario happens.

    To put it another way, the last few years have probably done a number on convincing people that reform is impossible.

  26. I mean, a couple marches doesn’t solve things, it brings further attention to the issue.

    The real work is organizing, keeping the pressure on, and developing real solutions with the local government, and that takes quite a bit of time and nothing changes over night.

  27. A lot of folks are tired of hearing about institutional racism when their eyes see a different story.

  28. Nothing radicalized me faster than the police response to the George Floyd protests. Seeing riot police firing tear gas into people’s homes, gleefully destroying first aid stations, shoving old men down steps, yanking them out of wheelchairs, absolutely turned my stomach.

    The fact that almost nothing has changed as a result is a travesty.

    Yet I’m at a loss of how we can fundamentally reform policing in the country. If protests that wide-scale didn’t move the needle, I don’t know what can.

  29. I tell you what has definitely changed, the quantity and quality of work we are getting from the police.

    It seems they got really mad that we asked them to be accountable and have been in a soft strike ever since

  30. Policing issue in the US is tough to crack. But I think main reason behind the lack of change is lack of laws and institution building driven by the initial social movement.

    If we want social change, we need to introduce laws and local institutions to sustainably drive the change over however much time it needs. Much of social movements of our generation revolved around hoping for creation of a third power that would magically change everything within the span of days, usually through some sort of force though never explicitly stated as such.

  31. Doesn’t help that the leaders of the BLM movement took care of themselves with a lot of those funds meant for good causes

  35. A big part is corruption of the justice system, along with the bullshit system of self management within the police force.

  36. The police have figured out the “It’s anarchy or us” is a winning strategy.

  37. As an old person, you’ll see a number of these murders that anger and motivate people be forgotten rather quickly. Seemingly, we’re incapable of forcing change.

  39. It did give a modern example of how people will try to rewrite history in real time even if there is video evidence proving what actually happened.

Leave a Reply