SCHOLAR: NEWS REPORT George Floyd

There is a very disturbing video of a man under police custody being suffocated by a police’s knee to the neck while three other policemen observe.  This video has gone viral and due to its explicit nature has had to be censored.  The man in question is George Floyd who was arrested by police and shortly thereafter was pinned to the ground and murdered.  This has caused massive outrage within Minneapolis.  There have been protests on the night of May 28.  These protests started peacefully but suddenly started to become riots.  Protestors, “broke windows, ….  tossed fireworks, … smashed equipment, lit fires” (New York Times, 2020).  This caused an alarming escalation of the protest to full on rioting.  “Flames began to rise from the front of the [Third precinct police building] as hundreds of protesters looked on, and soon smoke was billowing the roof” (New York Times, 2020).  Furthermore, neighborhoods were looted and vandalized causing massive damage to property and local businesses.  

The death of George Floyd is an issue of political contention because it was a white police officer that had caused the murder.  Contention, “involves making claims that bear on someone else’s interests” (Tilly et al., 2015).  Therefore, the interest of the black community such as black lives matter is to claim that this is yet another example of police brutality against the blacks.  Floyd was suffocated for approximately 8 minutes before dying while three other police officers were observing.  Since there is already a belief that blacks are the subject of police brutality, this has caused the black community to rebel against the police.  

The contention has diffused to other communities as well.  Diffusion is defined as, “[the] spread of a form of contention, an issue, or a way of framing it from one site to another” (Tilly et al., 2015).  The spread has moved to Atlanta, Pheonix, Denver, Las Vegas and Los Angeles “thousands of protestors” (Thanawala, 2020) gathered to demonstrate their support against the police.  As it becomes evident, political contention has clearly spread from the epicenter at Minneapolis to other communities.  This is actually such a big subject matter that even on twitter it is trending that the Amish community has also joined the demonstrations against the police.  Perhaps justice needs to be served against those policemen that were involved in this murder.  I think this will result in a more rebellious public.  This event will be a precedent for how police brutality should be handled.  

REFERENCES

New York Times.  (2020).  Protests Continue to Rage After Death of George Floyd.  Retrieved from:  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/george-floyd-national-guard.html

Tilly, C.  et al.  (2015).  Contentious Politics.  Oxford University Press.  

Thanwala, S.  (2020).  George Floyd death: Protests erupt across U.S., some turn violent.  Retrieved from:  https://globalnews.ca/news/7006414/george-floyd-death-protests/