Four years ago, on May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. We already had a too-long list of black men and women killed by police, and the video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s throat for nine minutes, assisted by 3 other cops, spurred a mass protest movement into action.
The movement against the long and brutal history of police murdering Black men crystallized under the banner of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in 2013 after the acquittal of the man who killed 17-year old Trayvon Martin.1 The movement grew, forcing us to pay attention as police killed Black men and women with impunity. On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner uttered his last words, “I can’t breathe,” over and over 17 times to an NYPD cop who continued to choke him. Less than a month later, Ferguson cop Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. And police kept killing Black people in other towns and cities all across America. We said their names and held them in our hearts: Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, Breonna Taylor. And so many more, their glaring absence felt by their communities.
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