“I Can't Breathe”: The Murder of George Floyd

The following was written and first published on Facebook by Isuru Herath in response to last night's killing by police of George Floyd (pictured above), an African-American man in his 40s who lived in St. Louis Park and worked as a security guard at Conga Latin Bistro. Isuru Herath is a labor organizer and south Minneapolis resident who lives in Ward 9, where Floyd was killed.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around another state-sanctioned murder at the hands of the police. There's something about how the cops decided to murder George Floyd during a pandemic by slowly taking away his ability to breathe just as COVID-19 slowly takes away the patient's ability to breathe – taking away the strength of the black race to breathe.

This act of choking an innocent person to death is a long-used tool of the capitalist state. Whether lynching black people in the U.S or the global north slowly suffocated the indigenous people across the world to retain hegemonic control of lands and resources of the global south, it's a deliberate, calculated act to kill non-white people.

When people say, George Floyd was saying, “I can't breathe” for four minutes, it echos the voices of the oppressed peoples who have been shouting for centuries. Now, there are over 100,000 people, mostly black people that died in the last few months, likely thinking at the end, “I can't breathe,” because of the negligent decisions by our political leaders to place the interest of profit [before people].

I see no difference between the action the cop took to kill George and the act of slowly killing people for the capitalists. Just as the Walz-Flannagan administration decided to open the state during this pandemic, knowing that it would be black, native, and immigrant communities that will feel the onslaught of the disease, they were willing to choke communities of color for their political expediency.

In this case, one form of choking is more explicit, and the other is insidious.

Similarly, when the healthcare industry, backed by the state, decides to under-staff hospitals intentionally and erode the protections of the workers, it's because they believe that black and brown lives are not worth saving. When conditions have created to force Amazon workers, the meat packagers, the factory workers, Caribou workers, and all essential workers to work with complete disregard for their humanity, the workers are indirectly, but intentionally choked.

It's all related; it wasn't another simple act of “police brutality,” but an overall coordinated part of our society set forth by the state and the corporate elites. The act of choking is a tool of the capitalist society, and it's the tool that AmeriKKKa has been using for centuries to slowly take away the ability for the oppressed people to breathe.

Rest in power, George Floyd. I hope you have all the opportunity to breathe freely.

– Isuru Herath
via Facebook
May 26, 2020

Related Off-site Links:
Man Dies in Minneapolis After Video Shows Police Officer Kneeling on His Neck – Star Tribune (May 26, 2020).
Man Who Begged “Please, I Can't Breathe” Dies in Minneapolis Police Custody – Mike Mullen (City Pages, May 26, 2020).
Man Dies in Minneapolis Police Custody; 4 Cops Fired; Gov. Walz Wants Answers – Brandt Williams, Tim Nelson and Matt Sepic (MPR News, May 26, 2020).
“It’s Real Ugly”: Protesters Clash With Minneapolis Police After George Floyd’s Death – Jeff Wagner (WCCO-4, May 26, 2020).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Rallying in Solidarity with Eric Garner and Other Victims of Police Brutality
• In Minneapolis, Rallying in Solidarity with Black Lives in Baltimore
• “Say Her Name” Solidarity Action
• “We Are All One” – #Justice4Jamar and the 4th Precinct Occupation
• Remembering Philando Castile and Demanding Abolition of the System That Targets and Kills People of Color
• Sweet Darkness
• Photo of the Day, 5/3/2015: “Black Is Sacred”
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part II)
• Something to Think About – March 25, 2016

Image 1: George Floyd. (Photographer unknown)
Image 2: George Floyd being choked to death by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin – Monday, May 25, 2020. The next afternoon it was announced that Chauvin and three other police officers had been fired for their role in Floyd's death. (Photo: Darnella Frazier)

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