I do not have an Instagram account and thus have never been to the site or used it in any way. All that I know about it comes from what people tell me and what I read in the media. It seems to be a favored platform for so-called ‘influencers’, people who use their accounts to promote products and in order to more effectively do so portray their lives in an unrelentingly upbeat way.
I could not watch the entire video of George Floyd being slowly killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. I had to stop it after a very short time because it was so disturbing. I had not realized that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, an incredibly long time. Floyd became non-responsive after about six minutes and at that point, at the urging of the crowd that was at the scene, another police officer checked for, but could not find, a pulse but Chauvin continued to keep his knee on his neck. The BBC has published a time line of the 30 minutes before George Floyd’s murder.
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Over the weekend, I had a Zoom conference call with relatives from across the world, nearly all of them living in countries other than the US, and the topic naturally turned to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide unrest. They were naturally disturbed by the reports they heard and wanted to understand what was going on. One of my relatives said that she could not understand why people were rioting and asked what purposes were served by them since they were counter-productive and often inflicted economic harm on the black community itself. What follows was my attempt at an answer.
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In the wake of the widespread unrest across the nation following the murder of George Floyd that has resulted in businesses being destroyed and other property damage, the Onion had this piece of advice from private equity specialists.
MINNEAPOLIS—Calling for a more measured way to express opposition to police brutality, critics slammed demonstrators Thursday for recklessly looting businesses without forming a private equity firm first. “Look, we all have the right to protest, but that doesn’t mean you can just rush in and destroy any business without gathering a group of clandestine investors to purchase it at a severely reduced price and slowly bleed it to death,” said Facebook commenter Amy Mulrain, echoing the sentiments of detractors nationwide who blasted the demonstrators for not hiring a consultant group to take stock of a struggling company’s assets before plundering. “I understand that people are angry, but they shouldn’t just endanger businesses without even a thought to enriching themselves through leveraged buyouts and across-the-board terminations. It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this.” At press time, critics recommended that protestors hold law enforcement accountable by simply purchasing the Minneapolis police department from taxpayers.
Also from the Onion, we have this video of a police officer describing the fear he feels every day that someone might record him brutalizing a civilian.
Some of you may recall the fun experiment that was done by the astronaut David Scott on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission when he tested Galileo’s idea that in the absence of air resistance, a hammer and a feather would fall to the ground at the same rate.
We have pretty much all had this experience at some time or other in some form. You are driving along a narrow road that has just one lane of traffic each way. The direction you are traveling in is jammed with very slow-moving traffic while the other lane for cars going in the opposite direction is empty. What do you do? If you are a normal person and not a jerk, you put it down to the vagaries of life and continue to crawl along.
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In a post a couple of days ago, I wrote about a Minneapolis venture capitalist Tom Austin who challenged a group of black men when they entered the gym in his office building because he felt that they had no right to be there. He told them that he was going to call the police because they were behaving in a threatening manner. It turned out that the men also had an office in the same building and thus they were perfectly entitled to use the gym. (I am calling Austin ‘Biff’ for acting like the male equivalent of a ‘Karen’, which is “a mocking slang term for an entitled, obnoxious, middle-aged white woman.”)
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How can people behave like this?
A woman who drove through a protest in Denver on Thursday appeared to deliberately try to run over a young black man, swerving directly at him and knocking him to the ground, according to a video of the incident.
The protest was one of many that have broken out nationwide over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by police in Minneapolis after an officer pushed a knee into his neck as he repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe.”
Video of the incident shows a car driving through the crowd, with the young man clutching onto the hood. He falls off the hood, landing on his feet.
The car then sharply turns, knocking him to the ground, before speeding away in the other direction.
…A spokesperson for the Denver Police Department told BuzzFeed News it is “aware of the incident” and is “looking for the victim as well as the driver.”
Downtown denver. Some girl turned around to run this guy over #GeorgeFloyd #icantbreathe #downtowndenver #denver pic.twitter.com/eirohGGPr5
— Anabel (@bellers03) May 29, 2020
She could have easily driven off after the man fell off her hood. I hope someone had the presence of mind to get her license plate number.
This morning, authorities announced that Derek Chauvin, who was the Minneapolis police officer whose knee on George Floyd resulted in his death, has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder.
Last night, protests continued in Minneapolis by people demanding that justice be done and some of those protests turned violent with buildings being set on fire.. As is often the case, the police in the US make bad situations worse by using excessive force against people who are protesting or just covering the protests even when it is clear that they could have de-escalated the situation. Last night a black CNN reporter and his producer and camera operator were arrested while covering the ongoing protests even as they politely asked the police where they should move to avoid interfering with whatever the police were doing.
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