In a bid to annoy as many people as possible Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are unable to even to honor the memory of George Floyd appropriately and don't seem even remotely interested in delivering any form of change to the system that led to Floyd's death.
Both Schumer and Pelosi had trouble giving Floyd the decency of even remembering his name, something that surely isn't as hard as it seems considering his name has been all over international news for the past month.
Schumer, in an address to congress, said "for the families of Floyd Taylor, uh, George Taylor". Where Schumer got the idea that George Floyd has 'Taylor' anywhere in his name is anyone's guess, but this does show that Schumer isn't serious about delivering meaningful change to policing or the issue of systemic racism in America.How can we trust the Democratic leadership to prioritize and fight for Black folks, when Schumer and Pelosi can’t even remember George Floyd’s name.
— People for Shahid (@People4Shahid) June 27, 2020
It’s about damn time we replace them both. pic.twitter.com/yqsueJrG04
Following in Schumer's pathetic footsteps, Nancy Pelosi couldn't even give Floyd some basic decency by remembering his name. During a press conference Pelosi said "I only will do that if you tell me this legislation is worthy of George Kirby's name".
This also came after Democrats decided to take part in a ridiculous photo op in which they kneeled in the halls of congress while wearing Ghanaian Kente cloth and took a moment of silence. This stunt was almost universally mocked as it showed that the Democrats aren't remotely serious in proposing the serious change that is needed after the killing of Floyd at the hands of the police, just more half measures and watered down policies that appease Republicans.
Ever since Floyd's death, actual legislative change has been hard to come by. Plenty of Instagram users decided that changing their profile pictures to black squares for a couple of days was just about enough activism for them, while virtually every brand and corporation posted a small message to social media about how we should all be nice to each other despite the fact that African Americans are hit much harder by the COVID-19 pandemic and make up the vast majority of lowest-paying service jobs, such as restaurant servers or retail workers, the same workers many of these brands and corporations swiftly sacked when COVID struck.
Even worse are the ideas that have been elevated to a national stage which are frankly laughable, such as "8 Can't Wait". While protestors and progressive groups made their intentions clear, wanting police budgets slashed and to be directed back into other public services, demilitarising the police force and actions of police brutality to be investigated impartially instead of overtly biased internal investigations. 8 Can't Wait instead gave us things such as banning chokeholds, requiring de-escalation measures, requiring a warning before shooting, comprehensive reporting of police actions and filming of the police via body cameras.
This sounds all well and good until you actually realise that chokeholds were already banned by police departments like the NYPD in 1993 and yet an NYPD officer killed Eric Garner in 2014 via chokehold and another NYPD officer was caught on video in late June this year placing a man in a 'banned' chokehold. Police officers are already required to use de-escalation measures and warning civilians before they fire a single shot, yet we've already seen that with the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police entering her home while she slept, seemingly police instead use a policy of 'shoot first, ask questions later'. Frankly the notion that having police officers filling out paperwork will reduce instances of police brutality is utterly ridiculous and the problem with relying on police body cameras is that officers simply turn them off, much like they did during the protests following Floyd's murder, as well as covering up their badge numbers so that they couldn't be identified for their actions by the public later on.
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