George Floyd
description: Black man killed in Minneapolis in 2020 during an arrest, sparking worldwide protests against police brutality
167 results
Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century
by W. David Marx · 18 Nov 2025 · 642pp · 142,332 words
means to clear out the old. * * * The cultural battles of the Trump era culminated in the 2020 protests against police brutality following the death of George Floyd, who was suffocated by law enforcement during his arrest over a suspected counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. During the following month, approximately twenty million Americans joined
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images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes.” Kanye West donated $2 million to the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, including support for Floyd’s daughter’s education. With passions inflamed, there were only two sides to the conflict, and
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on January 6, 2021. 2020 was harrowing. The world grappled with a global pandemic, the economy cratered, and the United States erupted in protest after George Floyd’s murder. Against this backdrop, former vice president Joe Biden ran against Donald Trump in a bitterly contested election. And despite an endorsement from SoundCloud
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Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT 67 percent of Americans: Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Kiley Hurst, and Dana Braga, “Support for the
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-black-people-at-vogue. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT West donated $2 million: Chloe Melas, “Kanye West Donates $2 Million, Pays College Tuition for George Floyd’s Daughter,” CNN, June 4, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/04/entertainment/kanye-west-two-million-dollar-donation/index.html. GO TO NOTE
Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
by Jacob Silverman · 9 Oct 2025 · 312pp · 103,645 words
issues. In 2018 and 2019, an exodus of Black employees led to accusations that Coinbase had created a hostile work environment. After Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, Armstrong equivocated on how to address dissent within his firm, which was starting to experience employee walkouts. In a Twitter thread, he used the phrase
City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways
by Megan Kimble · 2 Apr 2024 · 430pp · 117,211 words
, when thousands of people climbed onto I-35 and stopped traffic on the interstate that would eventually pass through Minneapolis, blocks from where the Houstonian George Floyd was killed by police. He felt the full force of the highway’s effects on Austin. It was crushing. But he could also imagine it
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile
by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek · 21 Oct 2025 · 330pp · 85,349 words
he was shot by cops who told him to move onto the sidewalk and then blocked him with their SUV before killing him. In Minneapolis, George Floyd was pinned to the asphalt and killed in the street next to a police vehicle after being pulled from a car he had borrowed from
Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History
by Alex von Tunzelmann · 7 Jul 2021 · 337pp · 87,236 words
were thrown into the sea. Sharks were said to follow slave ships to eat the discarded human meat.7 This crossing was the fate of George Floyd’s ancestors. His great-great-grandfather, Hillery Thomas Stewart Sr, was a slave in North Carolina, freed by the Thirteenth Amendment when he was eight
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up without a new plaque. Fourteen months later, in May 2020, Britain was in lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus when the story of George Floyd’s death broke. Britain has a different history and culture surrounding race from that of the United States, but they are linked – most clearly, in
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Matter’ and ‘Trump is a Wasteman’, knelt on the statue’s neck for eight minutes, just as Derek Chauvin had knelt on the neck of George Floyd.30 Edward Colston was rolled and kicked through Bristol streets, covered in paint, with bits falling off him, until protesters reached Bristol Harbour. They set
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7 June 2020. The sequence of acts by the Black Lives Matter protesters on that day engaged profoundly with the stories of Colston, Bristol and George Floyd, bringing them together in a statement against racism with global reverberations. Every phase in the protester’s actions was rich with historical and contemporary meaning
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so literally in the hands of the people. The protesters who knelt on its neck for eight minutes paid a sobering and powerful tribute to George Floyd. When the statue was lobbed into the harbour, it recalled breathtakingly the fate of almost one quarter of the Africans whom Colston’s ships transported
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, the protesters could not have made it clearer. Their action highlighted the links of slavery that bound American and British history, from Edward Colston to George Floyd, illuminated the endurance of white supremacy and racism across the transatlantic world, and demanded justice. 12American Idol George Washington Location: Portland, Oregon, USA Put up
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’s statue endured silently on a well-kept lawn outside the German American Society in Portland, Oregon. In 2020, though, everything changed. The death of George Floyd was not the only racially charged incident fuelling unrest in 2020. Ahmaud Arbery, a twenty-five-year-old black man, was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia
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set fire to its head.19 The statue’s body and plinth were covered in graffiti: ‘Genocidal colonist’, ‘Fuck cops’, ‘Big Floyd’ (a reference to George Floyd), ‘You’re on native land’ and ‘1619’ – the date African slaves were first brought to the American colonies. Once the fire was out, ropes were
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a groundbreaking work of musical theatre, yet its image of Washington is resoundingly traditional. Washington cannot, of course, be held responsible for the death of George Floyd, nor for the excesses of twenty-first-century policing. But the protesters who pulled down his statue on the night of 18 June 2020 were
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bound to arise of who, if anyone, should fill them. The public art made by protesters over the summer of 2020 included portrait murals of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as strikingly long lists of the names of the dead. As yet, they have not been memorialized as statues. Perhaps
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America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), p. 293. 11: Making a Splash: Edward Colston 1Manny Fernandez and Audra D. S. Burch, ‘George Floyd, From “I Want to Touch the World” to “I Can’t Breathe”’, The New York Times, 18 June 2020; ‘Before his deadly encounter with police
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begun a new life in Minnesota’, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2020. 2Dalton Bennett, Joyce Sohyun Lee and Sarah Cahlan, ‘The death of George Floyd: What video and other records show about his final minutes’, Washington Post, 30 May 2020. 3Frank Kitson, Prince Rupert: Portrait of a Soldier (London: Constable,
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, but his experience would have been all too familiar to many who went before him. 8Molly Hennessy-Fiske, ‘The many chapters marked by racism in George Floyd’s family history’, Los Angeles Times, 3 June 2020; Toluse Olorunnipa and Griff Witte, ‘Born with two strikes’, Washington Post, 8 October 2020. 9Carrie Gibson
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: Police officer charged but not over death’, BBC News, 23 September 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54273317. 11Derrick Bryson Taylor, ‘George Floyd protests: a timeline’, The New York Times, 10 July 2020; @realDonaldTrump (verified account), Twitter, 29 May 2020. 12Quoted in Erik Ortiz, ‘“I chose my city
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Confederate monument, faces state lawsuit’, NBC News, 3 June 2020. 13Andrew Buncombe, ‘“We’re not going anywhere”: Why Portland is still protesting 100 days after George Floyd’s killing’, Independent, 4 September 2020. 14‘George Washington Bush’, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/people/georgewashingtonbush.htm. 15Greg Nokes, ‘Black Exclusion Laws
Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections
by Mollie Hemingway · 11 Oct 2021 · 595pp · 143,394 words
the killing of a suspected criminal by Minneapolis police. A bystander had taken video of the nearly ten minutes that a cop spent kneeling on George Floyd’s neck during arrest as he begged for mercy before dying. Over ten thousand protests erupted around the country, at least a thousand of which
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to fires and looting. The media and their activist allies pushed the narrative that America was and is an irredeemably racist country and that the George Floyd video was just the latest proof of that reality. Despite the nationwide violence, the media insisted that the Black Lives Matter movement, which included calls
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Democrats were to inciting racial hatred for their political gain. This was the political context in which the nation learned of the police killing of George Floyd on May 25. Floyd, who was under suspicion of passing counterfeit bills, was killed when a police officer named Derek Chauvin restrained him by putting
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violence in horror as the deadly riots began spreading to other cities. President Trump tweeted on May 29, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen.” He added, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all
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crimes are crimes where there’s an explicit motive, and of bias,” Ellison said. “We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.”16 But the facts of the case didn’t matter. The media and Democratic leadership were fully
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radicals began their long march to undermine the ideas that had driven racial progress in this country for more than a century. By the time George Floyd was killed, identity politics had become the dominant prism through which the media and all other elite institutions—but not ordinary Americans—had come to
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of racist associations. Calling Trump a racist was electorally advantageous, and the response to the George Floyd killing was another effort to sacrifice the good of the country for the good of the Democratic Party. * * * When George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, extremist groups such as Black Lives Matter sprang into action to
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point. The point is the system we are fighting.”58 * * * Trump saw the damage the rioters could do up close. Since the beginning of the George Floyd riots, protesters had been amassing in Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the White House. The downtown area around the White House was
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A report emerged that Trump had been moved to a secure location to protect him from the protesters. In the week between the death of George Floyd and the assault on the White House, at least twelve statues and memorials were defaced by vandals, including the World War II Memorial and Lincoln
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bulletproof its own fact-check.”45 The censors would strike again just days later, on May 29. As riots consumed Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd, Trump sent two tweets: I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the
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bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.… These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let it happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way
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/trump-press-conference-transcript.html. 7. Dareh Gregorian, “ ‘Justice Will Be Served!’: Trump Weighs in on George Floyd Case,” NBC News, May 27, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/justice-will-be-served-trump-weighs-george-floyd-case-n1216026. 8. Jemima McEvoy, “ ‘It’s Just Devastating’: Some Minneapolis Businesses Still Fighting to
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Survive a Year after George Floyd Unrest,” Forbes, May 25, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/05/25/its
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-just-devastating-some-minneapolis-businesses-still-fighting-to-survive-a-year-after-george-floyd-unrest/?sh=7a66db8c3f77. 9. Tony Daniel, “Minneapolis Rioters Burned One of America’s Most Beloved Independent Bookstores to the Ground,” The Federalist, June 1, 2020
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/05/29/864818368/the-history-behind-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts. 14. Kathryn Watson, “Trump Calls George Floyd’s Death a ‘Terrible Thing,’ ” CBS News, May 29, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-calls-george-floyds-death-a-terrible-thing-2020-05-29/. 15. Scott Neuman, “Medical Examiner’s Autopsy Reveals
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George Floyd Had Positive Test for Coronavirus,” NPR, June 4, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial
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-justice/2020/06/04/869278494/medical-examiners-autopsy-reveals-george-floyd-had-positive-test-for-coronavirus. 16. Akshita Jain, “George Floyd’s Killing Not a Hate Crime because It Was Systemic Not ‘Explicit’ Racism, Says Official,” The Independent, April 26, 2021, https
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://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/george-floyd-killing-hate-crime-b1837419.html. 17. “964 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in the Past Year,” Washington Post, July 2, 2021, https
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Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. 31. Joseph Wulfsohn, “MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Says Situation Not ‘Generally Speaking Unruly’ while Standing outside Burning Building,” Fox News, May
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Topples George Washington Statue in NE Portland,” Koin 6 News, June 18, 2020, https://www.koin.com/news/protests/portland-protests-black-lives-matter-blm-george-floyd-police-reform-racial-justice-demonstration-rally-march-day-21/; Joel Finkelstein et al., “9/14/20–Network-Enabled Anarchy: How Militant Anarcho-Socialist Networks Use
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of the Stars Who’ve Donated to Bail-Relief Funds across the US,” Insider, June 8, 2020, https://www.insider.com/minnesota-protests-celebrity-donations-george-floyd-reactions-2020-5. 57. Tyler Olson, “Minn. Group That Saw $$ Surge, Some from Biden Staffers, Bailed Out Alleged Violent Criminals: Report,” Fox News, August 10
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-those-accused-of-violent-crimes. 59. Peter Hermann, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and Michelle Boorstein, “Fire Set at Historic St. John’s Church during Protest of George Floyd’s Death,” Washington Post, June 1, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/fire-set-at-historic-st-johns-church-during-protests-of
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-george-floyds-death/2020/06/01/4b5c4004-a3b6-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html. 60. Vandana Rambaran, “At Least 60 Secret Service Members Injured during George Floyd Protests in DC,” Fox News, May 31, 2020, https://www.foxnews.com/us/more
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-than-60-secret-service-officers-injured-during-violent-george-floyd-protests-in-washington-d-c. 61. Paul LeBlanc, “Famed DC Monuments Defaced after Night of Unrest,” CNN, May 31, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/
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, May 27, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-fact-checked-trump-tweets-mail-in-ballots/. 46. Jordan Culver, “Trump Says Violent Minneapolis Protests Dishonor George Floyd’s Memory, Twitter Labels ‘Shooting’ Tweet as ‘Glorifying Violence,’ ” USA Today, May 29, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/28
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/george-floyd-donald-trump-twitter-jacob-frey-thugs/5281374002/. 47. The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45), “Twitter, in an email to the White House moments ago, admitted
Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business
by Alan Murray · 15 Dec 2022 · 263pp · 77,786 words
known as stakeholders increasingly refused to ignore. It wasn’t just the murder of an unarmed Black man at the hands of the police. Instead, George Floyd’s death became a long overdue tipping point that spurred an unquenchable demand for equity and accountability, and that brought the conversation about race and
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who we are and what we believe in,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told Alan and me on Leadership Next about how the company responded to George Floyd’s murder. “I think the world’s changed, and businesses are held accountable for these other issues now. Even our shareholders are asking us to
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prominence. There had been other high-profile incidents of police violence against Blacks in recent years, but the tragic death of forty-six-year-old George Floyd, a Minneapolis Black man, became a tipping point. On May 25, Minneapolis police officers arrested Floyd after a convenience store clerk claimed he’d passed
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, he described the scene at that time. The company was already ramping up its employee and community support efforts because of the pandemic. But the George Floyd murder and the demand for a response hit the company solidly. “You had the combination of the impact of the virus on communities of color
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large protests and fed the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. But big company CEOs were, for the most part, silent. Their reaction following George Floyd’s death was different, indicating how much business leadership had changed in the few intervening years. Many CEOs had conversations with their employees about race
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have been laid off or furloughed as a result of the pandemic. This stark reality was rolled into the other inequities the Black population faced. George Floyd seemed to underscore the systemic lack of equality and civil rights that Blacks and other people of color experience in their daily lives. At the
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Cadre, which reportedly oversees some $800 million in assets. The meeting was off the record, but Williams agreed to talk with me afterward. Speaking of George Floyd, Williams told me, “I could very well have been in that same position because of how I looked. My professional accomplishments don’t matter that
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to diversity public, make your interviewing and hiring process public, and incentivize people off that.” He acknowledged that these efforts might not prevent the next George Floyd, but “there is no one-size-fits-all solution. There are going to be multiple paths that have to be invested in. As CEOs, one
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supply chain, but seeing how this extends to our communities. And that to me is the major difference.”10 AVOIDING MISSTEPS In the days after George Floyd was killed, there was a range of responses from the business community. Public statements of support for Black Lives Matter were issued from major brands
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. Thomas explained. “It’s sort of putting the problem out there and outsourcing the responsibility.” HUMBLING AND INSPIRING These back-to-back crises—COVID and George Floyd—felt like whiplash to the status quo. Commentators repeatedly said that each in its own way will change the country as we know it—and
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an imperative. It was being driven by trends in business and society that showed no sign of reversing. The outpouring of CEO sentiment after the George Floyd killing wasn’t just because “woke” CEOs suddenly decided to speak up. It happened because talented employees demanded it, and talent is today’s top
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the process, Genentech has been attentive to the systemic inequities in the health care system, which were exacerbated by the pandemic. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, Hardy published a piece articulating Genentech’s stand on racial justice and equity: The consequences of discrimination are far-reaching and acutely evident
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, it has provided a venue for the top women in business to meet and share business ideas. And in 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd killing, it became an opportunity to promote diversity and inclusion more broadly within companies. Ginni Rometty challenged the underrepresentation of Black and brown executives in
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and catalyze early-stage investments for firms with women founders, and invest in women’s technology startups. THE ONETEN INITIATIVE In late 2020, following the George Floyd killing, a group of prominent CEOs and organizations decided to back a bold initiative to upskill, hire, and promote one million Black Americans over the
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corporate world can fulfill its promises and respond to the cries for change that have only grown louder in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.”14 Simultaneous with our effort, Tim Ryan, chairman of PwC US, the audit and assurance, consulting, and tax service firm, published a blog post describing
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issue that runs counter to where you stand arises, that’s what activates that decision.” THE CHAUVIN MOMENT I wrote about how the killing of George Floyd in an encounter with Minneapolis police electrified the nation at the height of the COVID pandemic and solidified the BLM movement as a significant cultural
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manslaughter. Once again there was an expectation that American businesses would speak publicly about the verdict, especially since so many had spoken and acted when George Floyd was killed. But the demand had intensified. As Fortune reporter Geoff Colvin wrote, “Companies now face a dilemma that they didn’t face then. Over
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out placed the focus not on Chauvin but on the future of racial justice. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tweeted, “Right now I’m thinking of George Floyd, his family and those who knew him. I hope this verdict brings some measure of comfort to them, and to everyone who can’t help
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of a bigger struggle against racism and injustice.”14 General Motors’ Mary Barra weighed in: “While the guilty verdicts in the trial seeking justice for George Floyd are a step in the fight against bias and injustice, we must remain determined to drive meaningful, deliberate change on a broad scale.”15 From
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’s verdict was a defining & important moment. We recognize this does not make up for so much loss and injustice experienced by the Black community. George Floyd should be alive today. The work continues. We will keep taking action for racial equality and a more just world.”17 And from Starbucks
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: “George Floyd should be alive today. We still have work to do to address systemic racism and ensure everyone has an equal chance to succeed and thrive.
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SOCIAL PURPOSE “We need to show society who we are and what we believe in,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told me when we talked after George Floyd’s death. Robbins had spoken out about Floyd’s killing, calling it “horrific,” “maddening,” and “truly abhorrent.” He said, “I think the world’s changed
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everybody so they can have education, health care, and opportunity.” But he emphasized that when there is a social wrong, such as the murder of George Floyd, the company’s employees, customers, partners, and community stakeholders all want to know, “Where do you stand?” Robbins acknowledged something I noted earlier, that corporate
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certain issues where as a company we’re going to have a very binary take on what’s happening. Like this issue that happened with George Floyd. It’s just wrong. There are other issues where we’re going to have a spectrum of our employees who are going to believe one
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activist isn’t about mouthing off because you have a spotlight. It’s about adding a meaningful voice to the discussion. In the case of George Floyd’s death, “It’s just not like I’m sitting around and trying to figure out what to say,” Robbins said. “I mean, it’s
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. “Nike has a strong history of fighting for racial and social justice. [That’s] core to our mission and purpose as a company. When the George Floyd events occurred, we ran the ‘Don’t Do It’ campaign and made a $140 million commitment on racial and social justice.” Stan Bergman, CEO of
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your retirement age, you’re following carefully what’s happening with themes around the environment, or social activities like what we saw last year with George Floyd, or how people feel about their own companies, and how they reacted after COVID. There’s a whole new level of consciousness of the purpose
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. Tracy Jan, Jena McGregor, and Meghan Hoyer. “Corporate America’s $50 Billion Promise.” Washington Post, August 23, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/george-floyd-corporate-america-racial-justice/. PROLOGUE: GOD AND MANNA 1. “Pope Francis Encouraged Business Leaders to Leave No One Behind.” https://holyseemission.org/contents//events/5845c2d5e940c
How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
by Fredrik Deboer · 4 Sep 2023 · 211pp · 78,547 words
was genuinely viable. The country was simmering. On May 25, that simmer was brought to a boil. A forty-six-year-old Black man named George Floyd was confronted by Minneapolis police after a store clerk accused him of passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Derek Chauvin and three other officers removed
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the Trump years. Our whole civic society seemed strewn with kindling. On May 25, 2020, four Minneapolis police officers lit the match. The killing of George Floyd, an unarmed man accused of nothing more than passing a counterfeit bill, reverberated around the world. Covid-19 had devastated the economy, causing massive and
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that the center could not hold. Those were the conditions that primed the country for an explosion, one that was triggered by the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. THE SIMMER BOILS OVER Floyd’s brutal execution became one of the most viral events in the history of politics. (Imagine if
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piece, Wesley Lowery wrote that the media should modify its pretenses to neutrality and embrace a “moral clarity” that had developed in light of the George Floyd killing. “For years, I’ve been among a chorus of mainstream journalists who have called for our industry to abandon the appearance of objectivity as
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or drastically defunding them, at large scale, was simply never in the cards. More granular reforms were proposed. Some of these demands coalesced into the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which among other things would have expanded the federal government’s oversight over potentially racist police departments, provided funding for investigations
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for systemic change. Not in such a rotten system. The problem with 2020 was that activists and journalists and academics mistook heat for light. The George Floyd protests were some of the most well-publicized in human history, and it’s true that publicity is necessary for a protest movement to succeed
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, and it has proven to be remarkably adaptable, a great survivor. The moral necessity of confronting it could not be more clear. The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 was both a sudden flashpoint and the culmination of years of frustration and rage. The unjustifiable killing of Black men is as
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made 2020 a year of tension and unease when a raw cell phone video of a group of Minneapolis police officers detaining, assaulting, and murdering George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, set the world on fire. It provoked an international response of unprecedented scale. Seemingly every corner of our culture responded to
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one would look back today and suggest that enough was done. Indeed, in time, very understandable resentment has grown that so little changed. The post–George Floyd moment was indeed unprecedented, but it did not bring unprecedented change. Black Lives Matter has both failed and been failed. It was a noble movement
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behind. Those daily inequities were the background against which the drama of 2020 took place. When protesters took to the streets, they were marching for George Floyd, whose murder was seen by billions across the globe and whose death was correctly understood to be a crime of horrific cruelty and historical significance
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. We do, luckily, have a number of policy goals that we can pursue to address this injustice. A good overview can be found in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the sadly failed bill of proposed 2020 and 2021 federal legislation that was the most prominent recent attempt to address policing
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the police in the criminal justice system, which tends to happen in only the most spectacular abuses, such as with the police officers who murdered George Floyd; or you can sue. The doctrine of qualified immunity makes the latter very, very difficult, and is a big part of the reason that police
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act with complete impunity. Any meaningful reform of our criminal justice system must involve the end of qualified immunity. Discussion of the merits of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is largely academic, as the bill died in Congress, though I hope it might be revived. In 2020, Republicans controlled the
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other reason than to remind us of how hard change would be and that Republican power could not be wished away. Then again, perhaps the George Floyd Justice in Policing bill failed to attract much attention because it was overshadowed by the demand that became associated with the entire movement for justice
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that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s death, which became inescapable—“defund the police.” THE STRANGE LIFE OF DEFUND THE POLICE Defunding the police captured the public attention to a degree
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concept. The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, a sociology professor at the City University of New York, was released just three years before George Floyd’s murder and called for an eventual end to policing in its entirety. The book became something like a bible for those who pressed the
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’s impossible to say what might have happened in a world where defund the police did not become the most-expressed demand associated with the George Floyd moment. I would certainly have been thrilled if “end qualified immunity” had gained similar prominence. Supporters of defunding the police, of course, would point out
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anti-racism movement is the degree to which police violence is the right frame for dealing with racial inequality writ large. Certainly, the reaction to George Floyd’s murder demonstrates the power of the image of yet another Black victim of police brutality. I only wish more of the rage of 2020
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stakes in our debates. We can see this clearly in the story of the “Central Park Karen.” On Memorial Day 2020, the same day as George Floyd’s murder, a white woman walking her dog in Central Park got into an altercation with a Black birdwatcher. As their confrontation escalated, she threatened
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for more. This is a very durable finding in polling. Pew Research Center, for example, found that in June 2020, at the height of the George Floyd protest moment, 55 percent of Black respondents wanted police spending in their area to stay the same or to grow; by September 2021, that number
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number of disparate variables. Beyond that, I will leave the question to the sociologists. What I can tell you is that, especially in the post–George Floyd era of American race relations, the progressive left in the contemporary United States seems almost entirely unwilling to even broach the subject. I feel strongly
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broadcast shows increased from 8.3 percent to 11.6 percent and in cable shows from 12.9 percent to 14.1 percent. Since the George Floyd protests, media companies, universities, and charitable foundations have made major efforts to hire more Black employees. There are far more Black voices in the national
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show should be played by Black people.” My God. What sacrifice. George Floyd was killed in the street, and an actor gave up a voice-over gig. George Floyd was killed in the street, and investment banks adopted new corporate sensitivity policies. George Floyd was killed in the street, and defense contractors updated their employee handbooks
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. George Floyd was killed in the street, and universities made their language codes for faculty
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even more stringent. George Floyd was killed in the street, and the term “BIPOC”—that’s
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causes in 2020 and the years since. According to the Washington Post, the top fifty American corporations raised $50 billion for BLM-related purposes between George Floyd’s death and August 2021, though much of this money was not immediately accessible for charitable work. Individual donors and independent philanthropic organizations no doubt
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unheard.” And the whole thing was curious because the man who said it was a lifelong opponent of riots. Most of the protests inspired by George Floyd were peaceful. The vast majority of protesters, though filled with righteous and justifiable rage, showed up at the sites of demonstrations, chanted, carried signs, and
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, I can’t see how even those rare protests that involved tearing down statues could be considered violent by any fair standard. Some of the George Floyd protests did devolve into riot behavior, including arson and looting. Some cities saw repeated bouts of protester violence. In places like Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle
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never necessary: the bad behavior of a few bad actors did nothing to jeopardize the righteousness of the protest movement inspired by the murder of George Floyd. And yet defending riots became something of a cottage industry among progressives in 2020. “Merchandise can be replaced,” went one commonplace on social media, “Black
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poll found that, while large majorities were sympathetic to the peaceful protests, only 22 percent felt that violence and unrest were an appropriate response to George Floyd’s death. Protests have many purposes. Sometimes, they exist only to ensure that attention is paid to a great injustice so that no one can
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to politics, carefully developed and expressed demands, and the capacity to organize intelligently, all the money in the world won’t lead to justice. When George Floyd was murdered in the street in Minneapolis in 2020, countless Americans suddenly found themselves possessed of the demand for change. My worry is that for
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, as lamentable as it may be, the public did grow numb to #MeToo. And this is far from unique in social movements; the horror of George Floyd’s murder remains powerful, but the intensity of the immediate period following his murder could never be sustained. Perhaps some of #MeToo’s champions contributed
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the chapter on Black Lives Matter, annually a majority of people killed by the police are white. During the days of greatest public anger about George Floyd’s murder, pointing this fact out came to be seen as wicked and racist; we weren’t worrying about white people in that moment, the
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Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. “it is an error to jump”: Jonathan Chait, “The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age,” New York, June
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: Tracy Jan, Jena McGregor, and Meghan Hoyer, “Corporate America’s $50 Billion Promise,” Washington Post, August 23, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/george-floyd-corporate-america-racial-justice/?itid=lk_inline_manual_55. “Individual donors and independent philanthropic”: Ann Brown, “$10.6B+ Was Given to Black Lives Matter Causes
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Jackson, “The Double Standard of the American Riot.” The Atlantic, June 1, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/06/riots-are-american-way-george-floyd-protests/612466/. “suggest a new phase of opposition”: Thomas J. Sugrue, “2020 Is Not 1968: To Understand Today’s Protests, You Must Look Further Back
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”: Terry Nguyen, “There Isn’t a Simple Story about Looting,” Vox, June 2, 2020, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/6/2/21278113/looting-george-floyd-protests-social-unrest. “our country was built on looting”: Robin D. G. Kelley, “What Kind of Society Values Property Over Black Lives?,” New York Times
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, June 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/opinion/george-floyd-protests-looting.html. “have given the Second Amendment”: Glenn Harlan Reynolds, “Riots of 2020 Have Given the Second Amendment a Boost,” USA Today, October 8
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-capitol-301338240.html. But a similar 2020 poll: Ipsos, “Civil Unrest in the Wake of George Floyd’s Killing,” Reuters/Ipsos, June 2, 2020, https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/reuters-ipsos-civil-unrest-george-floyd-2020-06-02. 4: THE NONPROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX According to the Urban Institute’s: NCCS Project
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voters’ disillusionment with, 28 youth in, 79 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), 29–30, 168, 177–179 Democrats center-left, analyses of, 134–135 and George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 39 and labor unions, 195 liberals’ votes for, 135 moderates and liberals, 64 and police funding, 52 political positions of, 136
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gay marriage, 27, 188, 199, 214 gay rights issues, 2–3 gender identity, 173, 188 general case against nonprofits, 99–106 generational politics, 17–18 George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 38–39, 49–51 German Ideology, The (Marx), 176 Gitlin, Todd, 192 GiveWell, 102–103 globalization, 171 Good White Men, 157
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, 58, 62–63 racial bias in, 57–58 reforming, 58–59 police violence, 47, 199–200 against Black people, 47–49, 55–57, 199–200 George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 38–39 “moral clarity” about, 36–37 at protests, 81 qualified immunity for, 50, 54 Scott’s policing reform bill, 39
The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation
by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler · 14 Sep 2021 · 735pp · 165,375 words
consciousness as our minds flit to other concerns. The Occupy movement of 2011 sought to expose the inequities of the Great Recession. The killing of George Floyd led millions to feel anger and shame over the long and sustained mistreatment of African American men and women by the police. Like contagious disease
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those countries. State and local governments must also become stronger, and that strength must serve rather than oppress. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the calls to “defund the police” have become loud. Yet a poorer police department will provide neither more safety nor more respect for the community
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increasing inequality that is not offset by upward mobility. Many see a broken system, and their anger flared into street protests after the killing of George Floyd. The combination of profound challenges and political wildfire makes the post-COVID urban landscape far more treacherous. This chapter focuses on gentrification and the economic
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institutional reform and designing government policy, where it is hard to get things exactly right. Chapter 9 URBANIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS On May 25, 2020, George Floyd allegedly passed a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill at a convenience store in a gentrifying neighborhood of Minneapolis. The store called the police. The police arrived
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could never plausibly claim self-defense, because the bystanders’ videos show that Floyd was helpless and Chauvin was surrounded by other officers. Those videos turned George Floyd from a data point into a cause. As of December 1, 2020, the five most-watched videos of Floyd’s death had over fifty million
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-19, the streets exploded. Societies are more vulnerable to pestilence or natural disaster when they are already riven by conflict. Anger over the slaying of George Floyd brought people out even in the face of an airborne pandemic. We don’t know if the protests spread COVID-19, but in 1918, patriotic
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to spread the deadly flu.” One 2020 study found that “in the eight cities analyzed, all had positive abnormal growth in infection rate” after the George Floyd–related protests occurred. But another paper found “no evidence that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case or death growth after more than five weeks following
…
misdemeanors because the ‘children who were the victims of his assault couldn’t be made to testify against him in court.’ ” As the video of George Floyd’s death illustrates, a single graphic incident can be vastly more powerful than a mountain of statistics. The day after the Seattle Times article, “a
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a politician who was giving voters what they wanted: more punishment and less crime. This history presents a warning to the would-be avengers of George Floyd today. The activists who imposed the draconian laws that imprisoned so many young men were also fueled by an understandable rage. To them, no policy
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far if it protected a future Diane Ballasiotes. Today, some protesters seem to think no policy can go too far if it protects some future George Floyd. Both perspectives are comprehensible. Unfortunately, both are wrong. We must find the middle ground that protects our children from both private violence and police malfeasance
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their “job is to improve working conditions for our members—police officers who work in Minneapolis—and to make certain their rights are protected.” After George Floyd’s murder, the president of the Minneapolis police union, Lieutenant Bob Kroll, made it clear that the union’s labor attorneys were going to fight
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“they were terminated without due process.” For good measure, he threw in the accusation that the media was covering up “the violent criminal history of George Floyd” and suggested that the protesters were a “terrorist movement.” Kroll himself has been the subject of twenty-two internal affairs complaints. The Wall Street Journal
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a key element of public safety.” That line would be greeted warmly by any right-wing, libertarian audience. In a coauthored article written after the George Floyd killing, Meares calls for “a relationship in which state and community co-produce public safety, with an emphasis on transitioning power from the police to
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.” In 2011, demonstrators seized: Gabbatt, Townsend, and O’Carroll, “ ‘Occupy’ Anti-capitalism Protests Spread around World.” Two months after the COVID lockdowns: Sullivan and Morrison, “George Floyd Fallout: Unrest Overshadows Peaceful Protests for Another Night.” Seattle’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone”: Bush, “Welcome to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Where Seattle Protesters
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of Housing Supply.” CHAPTER 9: URBANIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS On May 25, 2020: Hill et al., “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody.” Derek Chauvin: Barker and Kovaleski, “Officer Who Pressed His Knee on George Floyd’s Neck Drew Scrutiny Long Before.” In 2018 alone: Mapping Police Violence. As of December: Taken from
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the YouTube website, December 1, 2020. “little to end the war”: “The Flu in Boston,” PBS. “in the eight”: Valentine, Valentine, and Valentine, “Relationship of George Floyd Protests to Increases in COVID-19 Cases Using Event Study Methodology.” “no evidence that urban”: Dave et al., “Black Lives Matter Protests and Risk Avoidance
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of Minneapolis,” FindGlocal. “they were terminated without”: Matthews, “How Police Unions Became So Powerful—and How They Can Be Tamed.” “the violent criminal history”: Sheehy, “George Floyd Had ‘Violent Criminal History’: Minneapolis Police Union Chief.” twenty-two internal affairs complaints: Belkin, Maher, and Paul, “Clout of Minneapolis Police Union Boss Reflects National
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.” Accessed January 25, 2021. www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator. Barker, Kim, and Serge F. Kovaleski. “Officer Who Pressed His Knee on George Floyd’s Neck Drew Scrutiny Long Before.” The New York Times, July 18, 2020. www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/us/derek-chauvin
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-george-floyd.html. Barnett, Michael L., Lissy Hu, Thomas Martin, et al. “Mortality, Admissions, and Patient Census at SNFs in 3 US Cities During the COVID-19
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. Collins, Sean. “The Anger behind the Protests, Explained in 4 Charts.” Vox, May 31, 2020. www.vox.com/2020/5/31/21276004/anger-police-killing-george-floyd-protests. “Combating the Coronavirus Pandemic: Bosch Develops Rapid Test for COVID-19.” Bosch Global. Accessed December 25, 2020. www.bosch.com/stories/vivalytic-rapid-test
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-sf. Hill, Evan, Ainara Tiefenthäler, Christiaan Triebert, Drew Jordan, Haley Willis, and Robin Stein. “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody.” The New York Times, June 1, 2020. www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html. Hilmers, Angela, David C. Hilmers, and Jayna Dave. “Neighborhood Disparities in Access to Healthy
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-Cigarettes.” US Food and Drug Administration. Last modified September 10, 2019. www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-voices/how-fda-regulating-e-cigarettes. Sheehy, Kate. “George Floyd Had ‘Violent Criminal History’: Minneapolis Police Union Chief.” New York Post, June 2, 2020. https://nypost.com/2020/06/02
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/george-floyd-had-violent-criminal-history-minneapolis-union-chief. Sheridan, Adam, Asger Lau Andersen, Emil Toft Hansen, and Niels Johannesen. “Social Distancing Laws Cause Only Small Losses
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News, February 14, 2020. https://seniorhousingnews.com/2020/02/14/long-term-care-executive-salaries-rose-2-8-in-2019. Sullivan, Tim, and Aaron Morrison. “George Floyd Fallout: Unrest Overshadows Peaceful Protests for Another Night; No Apparent Injuries after Semitruck Drives into Minneapolis Demonstrators.” Chicago Tribune, May 31, 2020. www.chicagotribune.com
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/nation-world/ct-nw-george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-nation-20200531-7qcojsy535bs7a56cxk3cnmrgq-story.html. Summers, Judith. “Broad Street Pump Outbreak.” UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology. Accessed January 17
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-releases/nih-funded-studies-show-stents-surgery-no-better-medication-lifestyle-changes-reducing-cardiac-events. Valentine, Randall, Dawn Valentine, and Jimmie L Valentine. “Relationship of George Floyd Protests to Increases in COVID-19 Cases Using Event Study Methodology.” Journal of Public Health 42, no. 4 (November 2020): 696–97. https://doi.org
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failure to prepare for, 150–52, 153–56 federal aid programs, 195–96 in Florida, 197–98 and forward-looking prevention strategies, 326–29 and George Floyd-related protests, 276 hot spots for, 7, 175, 185 humans as primary vectors of, 86 job losses due to, 2, 169, 196, 197, 228, 229
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle · 14 Oct 2022 · 655pp · 156,367 words
vice-president in American history. But that was hardly sufficient, especially given the magnitude of the racial justice uprising triggered by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. Floyd, an African American man, had been arrested that day for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 check at a
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Times in the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). 42.Evan Hill, Ainara Tiefenthäler, Christiaan Triebert, Drew Jordan, Haley Willis, and Robin Stein, “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody,” New York Times, May 31, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us
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/george-floyd-investigation.html, accessed September 28, 2021. 43.Derrick Bryson Taylor, “George Floyd Protests: A Timeline,” New York Times, June 2, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-protests-timeline.html, accessed September 28, 2021; Audra D. S. Burch, Amy Harmon
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, Sabrina Tavernise, and Emily Badger, “The Death of George Floyd Reignited a Movement. What Happens Now?,” New York Times, April 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com
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/2021/04/20/us/george-floyd-protests-police-reform.html, accessed September 28, 2021; Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K
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Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html, accessed September 28, 2021; Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police,” New York Times, June 12, 2020, https://www
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May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases—And What We Can Do About It
by Alex Edmans · 13 May 2024 · 315pp · 87,035 words
Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
by Kurt Andersen · 14 Sep 2020 · 486pp · 150,849 words
This Land: The Struggle for the Left
by Owen Jones · 23 Sep 2020 · 387pp · 123,237 words
Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix
by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski · 18 Apr 2022 · 414pp · 117,581 words
Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis
by Scott Patterson · 5 Jun 2023 · 289pp · 95,046 words
Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
by Charles Murray · 14 Jun 2021 · 147pp · 42,682 words
Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil
by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Véricourt · 10 May 2021 · 291pp · 80,068 words
The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now
by Sergey Young · 23 Aug 2021 · 326pp · 88,968 words
No One Succeeds Alone
by Robert Reffkin · 4 May 2021 · 210pp · 62,278 words
SEDATED: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis
by James. Davies · 15 Nov 2021 · 307pp · 88,085 words
Equality
by Darrin M. McMahon · 14 Nov 2023 · 534pp · 166,876 words
Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect
by David Goodhart · 7 Sep 2020 · 463pp · 115,103 words
We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News
by Eliot Higgins · 2 Mar 2021 · 277pp · 70,506 words
Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All
by Laura Bates · 2 Sep 2020 · 364pp · 119,398 words
Still Broke: Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism
by Rick Wartzman · 15 Nov 2022 · 215pp · 69,370 words
Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
by Elle Reeve · 9 Jul 2024
How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World
by Dambisa Moyo · 3 May 2021 · 272pp · 76,154 words
Your Computer Is on Fire
by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip · 9 Mar 2021 · 661pp · 156,009 words
Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside - Finding Home in an English Country Garden
by Marchelle Farrell · 2 Aug 2023 · 217pp · 76,056 words
The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt
by Sinan Aral · 14 Sep 2020 · 475pp · 134,707 words
Happy-Go-Lucky
by David Sedaris · 30 May 2022 · 206pp · 64,212 words
Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age
by Eric Berger · 23 Sep 2024 · 375pp · 113,230 words
You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
by Adrian Hon · 14 Sep 2022 · 371pp · 107,141 words
Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today
by Jane McGonigal · 22 Mar 2022 · 420pp · 135,569 words
Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
by Devon Price · 4 Apr 2022 · 456pp · 101,959 words
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
by Oliver Burkeman · 9 Aug 2021 · 206pp · 68,757 words
This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help
by New Scientist and Helen Thomson · 7 Jan 2021 · 442pp · 85,640 words
Alive
by Gabriel Weston · 15 Aug 2025 · 177pp · 59,831 words
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age
by Vauhini Vara · 8 Apr 2025 · 301pp · 105,209 words
Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
by Kevin Roose · 9 Mar 2021 · 208pp · 57,602 words
The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World
by David Sax · 15 Jan 2022 · 282pp · 93,783 words
The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back
by Jacob Ward · 25 Jan 2022 · 292pp · 94,660 words
Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley
by Atsuo Inoue · 18 Nov 2021 · 295pp · 89,441 words
Re-Educated: Why It’s Never Too Late to Change Your Life
by Lucy Kellaway · 30 Jun 2021 · 184pp · 60,229 words
Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo
by Rebecca Walker · 15 Mar 2022 · 322pp · 106,663 words
Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything
by Martin Ford · 13 Sep 2021 · 288pp · 86,995 words
Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World
by Mo Gawdat · 29 Sep 2021 · 259pp · 84,261 words