The summer after the world witnessed the brutal beating of Rodney King, I and a group of friends made our way to a nightclub in the southern part of Dade County, Florida. We had recently returned to America after having spent months in Saudi Arabia, not knowing if we would ever see our families again or if we would be confronted with some lingering illness resulting from our service to our country.
...
George Floyd
George Floyd
Two years after his death, efforts to raise funds for a memorial center in Raleigh continue A neighbor remarked last week that the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas had quickly pushed the grocery store killings in Buffalo, New York off the front pages of most newspapers. He concluded that the mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, which resulted in 10 deaths, has already been forgotten...
...
When former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck in 2020, the world witnessed the most racist elements of the U.S. criminal legal system on broad display. The uprisings that followed Floyd’s death articulated a vision for transforming public safety practices and investments.
...
The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year helped instigate a new wave of interest in changing policing in the U.S., including new ways to respond to calls that involve people experiencing mental health crises. The issue gained additional prominence after officer bodycam footage was released that showed Rochester, N.Y., police handcuffing Daniel Prude, a Black man in a mental health crisis, putting a spit hood over his head and pressing his face onto the pavement.
...
Rev. Gregory Drumwright, who was in the courtroom Tuesday, has hope and continuing concern about the relationship between law enforcement and Black Americans The minutes leading to Judge Peter Cahill’s reading of the jury verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin were filled with anxiety, angst and uncertainty, says Rev. Gregory Drumwright, a Greensboro minister who has provided pastoral care to George Floyd’s family the past several months.
...Even for those of us who found a measure of joy during the year whose end we now mark – taking delight from a child’s birth, perhaps, or from a marriage, a graduation, success at work – Americans will remember 2020 chiefly as a showcase of conflict and sorrow. It brought of course the rampage of the coronavirus, costing upwards of 330,000 lives with many more in the balance.
...