COVID Derek Chauvin and the Need to Breathe

Well there has been a verdict with the cop who killed Mr. George Floyd. Before I add my two cents on the whole guilty thing, let me tell you about my COVID. March 22 is when I got sick with the virus. It was through family contact and all of us in our home got sick. Luckily the younger ones didn't get real bad symptoms. We, however, my wife and daughter got real sick. Being sick was not fun at all. I am still feeling weak, have a cough but feeling way better. I really thought it was the way I was going to exist this world - weak, very beat up sore and not being able to breath. I recommend not getting sick if you can help it. 

Mr. George Floyd has become the symbol (not by choice) of racism-cops-killing in action. This man was killed in front of a couple of kids, some adults and the world. The cop who killed Mr. Floyd is in jail and convicted of murder (although there are varying degrees of murder in the legal system). I think there was a collective sigh of relief followed by a collective saying of "nah." Nah is an Ojibwe saying like "there." Like when you act up as a kid and finally your mom comes over and whacks your bum and she says "nah, see what happens?" The world went Nah, see what happens when you murder. The reaction of people to the guilty verdict, seems to be of joy but it is not that at all. It is like getting to breathe after being not able to for a long time. The cough will still be there, the lingering affects of not being fully healed. There is relief of being able to breathe so of course there will be feelings of happiness. Not pure joy but the kind of happiness that only relief brings. Many of us thought that despite the evidence this cop would be not found guilty. So when he was found guilty, the response was to be relieved and happy. 

Derek Chauvin is the cop who killed Mr. George Floyd by keeping his knee and his weight on the neck of Mr. Floyd for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds. The world saw Mr Floyd trying to breathe, the world felt the pressure of the knee on their own neck. Society, Black Society, the Indigenous society feel the need to breathe. There is no joy in the jailing of the racist murderer. This is just a chance to catch a breath before someone else starts choking the Black society, the Indigenous society, the LGBTQ society and the People of Colour society. So some folks will look happy and let them be happy. Let them get a chance to feel that the system is not choking them at this one moment. 

The verdict of guilty came 30 minutes after a young Black girl was shot four times by a cop. The circumstances still being examined. I really wonder about the killings by police. Why do they feel the need to kill? I mean look at the video of Mr. George Floyd being kneed on, why didn't the cop get up? I see him with his hands in his pockets all the while people are pleading with him to get off of Mr. Floyd. He looked with no emotion, no humanity, no care and no intent to relent. What was going on in his mind? The cop didn't take the stand so no one can ever know what he really was thinking. Why didn't he stand up? Why did he feel the need to discount the human being under his knee? There is no excuse for what this cop did. The thing is there are many instances where there is no excuse but yet they, the cops are in fact excused for what they do.  I think I know why this happens; they don't see the person they are killing as another human being. That is the basis of racism, they take the humanity out of the equation or in their view. 

Locally to our area, there is going to be an inquest in Winnipeg Manitoba for the shooting of Eishia Hudson, a 16 year old Indigenous girl by a cop. We know the outcome as it is always the same outcome. That is why the outcome for Mr George Floyd stands out, it is anomaly because cops rarely get held to account. It has become so ingrained in society that cops even make cruel jokes; "I can breathe, Blue Lives Matter" at the scene of a deadly shooting of a Black girl. So the guilty verdict of the cop Chauvin is very rare, as rare as seeing a cop stopping another cop from choking an individual. 

Cariol Horne speaks Oct. 17, 2020, during a women's march in Buffalo. (Derek Gee/AP) Cariol Horne a cop stopped other cop from choking an individual.