On May 25, onlookers recorded Minneapolis police officers kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old Black man, for eight minutes and 46 seconds, killing him. It was a horrifying reflection of the long history of police violence against Black people in the United States. Floyd’s murder sparked an ongoing wave of protests … Read more
On the night of April 4, 1968, despondent presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy climbed onto the back of a flat-bed truck in the heart of Indianapolis’ Black community, intending to share with the unsuspecting 2000-person crowd the grim news: Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Instinctively, a heartbroken Kennedy spoke the healing words … Read more
Kevin Bi is a member of the Harvard College Open Data Project. Another unarmed Black man has been killed by the police. His name was George Floyd. The video of a police officer’s brazen cruelty and his utter disregard for the words “I can’t breathe” was shocking, but not new. In March, Breonna Taylor was shot … Read more
Eden Fesseha, Zoë Hopkins and Ife Omidiran work with the Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Advocacy. “Thank you all for the love. This matter is urgent. I have a timeline of April 30.” These were the final words in a letter written by Michael Mauney (aka Country) asking people to call the Massachusetts district … Read more
As I write this, civilians in dozens of American cities are mounting protests against police brutality in response to the murder of George Floyd. Those who experience American society as a liberal democracy have taken these protests as an opportunity to pursue a favorite question: How would we survive without the police? The American liberal … Read more
The mayor of Los Angeles grasped for justification after imposing a curfew last weekend, declaring that “violence and vandalism hurts all.” Woven throughout his trite, state-sanctioned rhetoric is the basic assumption that force against property can be equated with state violence. However, violence against property is a farcical construction. You cannot suffocate a Target, starve … Read more
As I write, my Twitter account floods with notifications: protesters marching for Black lives in New York City are trapped on the Manhattan Bridge by NYPD on both sides, live-tweeting for help. I think of my friend’s Facebook Live stream of demonstrations in Washington DC, which captured the pandemonium of police and the National Guard … Read more
While Trump was busy hearkening back to segregationist-era maxims and militarising against the eruption of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s callous death, his foreign adversaries adopted a different tact. From Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei tweeted that “A human… has no reassurance to live in society, if…a police officer can beat him to … Read more
Since the death of George Floyd on May 25, Minnesotans have woken up each day to a changed world. First, when news of Floyd’s death flooded media headlines, the community reacted with grief and outrage as activists quickly organized peaceful protests. Just days later, the sunrise was accompanied by smoldering fires and shattered glass as … Read more