George Floyd

In the Realm of the Last Man

by Francis Fukuyama  · 3 Jul 2026

just world would look like. In the third decade of the twenty-first century, identity politics made a big comeback, particularly after the killing of George Floyd during the Covid pandemic in 2020. In many ways, the movement had regressed since the 1980s. Back then, there was a prolonged and sophisticated debate

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

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

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

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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

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

by Michael Shellenberger  · 11 Oct 2021  · 572pp  · 124,222 words

June that a group of people had taken over a neighborhood in downtown Seattle, ostensibly in response to the killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by a police officer in Minneapolis, I couldn’t understand what had happened. It wasn’t like a bunch of heavily armed anarchists had erected

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her in counseling forever.”1 In the spring of 2020, a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeled on the neck of a black man named George Floyd for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. A bystander filmed the event on her smartphone.2 Twenty times Floyd said he could not breathe. Floyd

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, especially among people who have had negative experiences with the police. “I wish to God I didn’t watch that video,” said Vickie about the George Floyd video. “When stuff like that happens, I flip so quick back to the other side where I hate police. It’s just, ‘Oh, I hate

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for days on end. There wasn’t no road map. We just had to work through it and figure it out. Then, the killing of George Floyd happened.”53 Because of COVID-19, Best said, “A lot more people had the availability to come out and to engage in what happened to

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George Floyd, which was quite beautiful.” But a small group of people within the crowd started to behave violently. “Within that large group of people who were

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, Vickie felt compelled to stand up to the anarchists. “You’re not going to do this in my neighborhood!” she shouted. “How dare you disrespect George Floyd and his family! We don’t protest like this. Stop using Black Lives Matter to tear up the city.” Vickie at one point shoved a

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just not used to.”8 In the spring of 2021 anarchists created yet another autonomous zone, this time in Minneapolis, at the intersection near where George Floyd was killed. Local black-owned businesses suffered because customers were unwilling to enter the zone.9 Many of the occupiers were not from the community

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, and one of the men died. The mayor of Minneapolis initially said police would not move to break up the zone until the trial of George Floyd’s killer is completed but then reversed himself.11 Some have protested elected officials at their homes. In San Francisco, radical left activists protested Mayor

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chief of police said the loss of officers was due to “low morale resulting from anti-police sentiment in New York since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis officers.”78 Mayors forced out other police chiefs. Tempe’s police chief, who was hired in 2016 as a reformer

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the author, January 7, 2021. 2. Audra D. S. Burch and John Eligon, “Bystander Videos of George Floyd and Others Are Policing the Police,” New York Times, updated May 29, 2020, www.nytimes.com. 3. “George Floyd: What happened in the final moments of his life,” BBC, July 16, 2020, www.bbc.com. 4

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Paint ‘Defund the Police’ Right Next to D.C.’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ Mural,” Washington Post, June 7, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com. 5. Chase DeFeliciantonio, “George Floyd Protest Briefly Shuts Down Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2020, www.sfchronicle.com; Matthias Gaffni, Matt Kawahara, Tatiana Sanchez

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, Accurate Coverage of Occupation Outside ‘Red House’ in N. Portland,” Oregonian, December 11, 2020, www.oregonlive.com. 9. Andrea Blackstone, “Black-Owned Businesses Struggle at George Floyd Square, Plead for Financial Help,” Black Enterprise, April 23, 2021, www.blackenterprise.com. 10. “NewsNation Goes Inside Minneapolis ‘Autonomous Zone’ Called

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George Floyd Square,” NewsNation Now, March 17, 2021, YouTube video, 8:19, www.youtube.com. 11. “Man shot and killed near George Floyd Square in Minneapolis,” AP News, March 7, 2021, www.apnews.com; “NewsNation goes inside Minneapolis ‘autonomous

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zone’ called George Floyd Square”; Danielle Wallace, “FBI to monitor Minneapolis ‘autonomous zone’ in George Floyd Square amid Derek Chauvin trial,” Fox News, March 18, 2021, video, 4:44, www.foxnews.com; Jared Goyette, “Amid Complaints of Violence, Minneapolis

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Moves to Reopen Intersection Where George Floyd Was Killed,” Washington Post, March 18, 2021, www.washingtonpost.com. 12. Lizzie Johnson, Trisha Thadani, and Kevin Fagan, “Tensions High in SF, Oakland in

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George Floyd Protests; Looting Spreads to Walnut Creek,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 2020, www.sfchronicle.com. 13. Kelly Kruger, interview by the author, October 1, 2020.

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

by Lawrence Wright  · 7 Jun 2021  · 391pp  · 112,312 words

really factor into this case. The cause of death was a police officer’s knee on the neck. The man on the autopsy bench was George Floyd. According to the charging documents, “The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” This was to explain the

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his death.” The document read like an excuse for minimizing charges against the one officer. The whole world knew what happened. Four Minneapolis policemen killed George Floyd as he was handcuffed and lying facedown in the street. It was May 25, 2020, Memorial Day. One cop stood watch as two knelt on

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. It was started by Mike’s father, and Mike had worked there since the age of ten. He knew most of his customers by name. George Floyd was a regular for about a year; it’s where he bought credits for his cell phone. Abumayyaleh later described him as “a big teddy

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, El Nuevo Rodeo, the same place where Floyd did security work, but they don’t seem to have known each other. The cops who killed George Floyd were not stereotypical racists; they were complexly entangled in the net of interracial relationships that characterize modern America. But they did act as the face

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in Minneapolis still used force against Black people at a rate seven times higher than against whites. In the age of smartphones, the murder of George Floyd was a kind of performance, with the whole world serving as an audience. The police were well aware that they were being recorded by a

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citizens with constant reforms that never led to meaningful improvements in their lives. Incrementally, there was progress. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison took over the George Floyd case. Ellison was the first Black person elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota; when he was elected attorney general, he became

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over the troubled police department there. His successor, U. Reneé Hall, was the first woman to lead the Dallas force. In the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, Chief Hall, who is Black, struggled to deal with what many saw as the overreaction by the Dallas police to contain the protests, which

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’t been killed. She might still be chief of police if she had been able to bring under control the clashes that took place after George Floyd’s death. Floyd might still be alive if he hadn’t passed a counterfeit bill, having lost his job because of the pandemic. So much

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America but in cities around the world—to protest the death of an unemployed Black man with a criminal record and a drug problem. If George Floyd’s life could matter, so might the lives of every minority citizen. There were many elements contributing to this massive outpouring. Part of it was

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world war, told law enforcement officers at the courthouse they were there to help defend it. It was Memorial Day, the same holiday on which George Floyd would be killed a century later. Many in the mob carried weapons. In this tense standoff, someone fired a pistol, perhaps a warning shot, but

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Ingraham said on Fox News, on August 31. She and President Trump were discussing the protests in Portland, which had been going on nightly since George Floyd’s murder. A Trump supporter was shot and killed in downtown Portland two days before the show. Shortly before that, three people had been shot

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of prayer. * * * — When Amy Klobuchar dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, she moved onto Biden’s shortlist for his running mate. George Floyd’s death put an end to that. Klobuchar had begun her career twenty years earlier as the district attorney in Hennepin County, developing a reputation

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, 2014. 17. I CAN’T BREATHE “a big teddy bear”: Angelina Chapin, “If I Would Have Been Here, George Floyd Would Be Alive,” The Cut, June 2, 2020. the pandemic put him out: “George Floyd: What happened in the final moments of his life,” BBC, July 16, 2020. J. Alexander Kueng: Kim Barker, “The

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Black Officer Who Detained George Floyd Had Pledged to Fix the Police,” New York Times, June 27, 2020. Thomas Lane: Sachin Jangra, “Who Is Thomas Lane?” The Courier Daily, June 12,

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Chauvin, Seeks Name Change in Divorce,” International Business Times News, June 3, 2020. had a mixed record: Pilar Melendez, “Minneapolis Man: Cop Who Kneeled on George Floyd ‘Tried to Kill Me’ in 2008,” Daily Beast, May 29, 2020. over half of all the Black males: Dan Olson, “Racial Disparities—An Overview,” Minnesota

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gap in Minnesota’s healthcare system,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sept. 14, 2020. first white officer: Catherine Kim, “What we know about the officers involved in George Floyd’s death,” Vox, May 31, 2020. “very fine people”: “In Context: Donald Trump’s ‘very fine people on both sides’ remarks,” Politifact, Aug. 15, 2017

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8, 2016. “We’re hiring”: “Dallas police chief to protesters: We’re hiring,” KCRA3, July 12, 2016. overreaction by the Dallas police: “After Action Report: George Floyd Protest, May 29, 2020 Thru June 1, 2020,” Aug. 14, 2020. “I am telling the truth”: Diane Solis, “40 years after the murder of Santos

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

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

by Ben Shapiro  · 26 Jul 2021  · 309pp  · 81,243 words

the Revolutionary Impulse of identity politics could achieve victory. USING THE SYSTEM TO TEAR DOWN THE SYSTEM In July 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests alleging widespread and systemic American racism, the National Museum of African American History and Culture—a project of the Smithsonian Museum, a taxpayer-funded

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. They were, in short, more interested in The ScienceTM than in science itself. That became perfectly clear at the end of May. On May 25, George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, died in the custody of Minneapolis police. Floyd was a career criminal with a serious record; the police

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the most tangential and irrelevant companies chimed in. Ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s issued a statement: “We must dismantle white supremacy. . . . What happened to George Floyd was not the result of a bad apple; it was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and culture that has treated black

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!”13 Even corporate heads weren’t immune from the pressure: CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman was forced to resign from his company after controversial comments about George Floyd; two officials from the Poetry Foundation stepped down after their pro-BLM statement was considered too mealy-mouthed; the editor in chief of Bon Appétit

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, too. Chapter 6 The Radicalization of Entertainment In September 2020—in the midst of the supposed racial “reckoning” sweeping the nation after the death of George Floyd—the Academy Awards announced it would shift the standards for its golden statuettes. No longer would films be selected on the basis of quality. Instead

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network—and the leagues—had already been renormalized. It was simply too late to pull out of the tailspin. By 2020, after the killing of George Floyd in police custody resulted in nationwide protests, virtually every sports league mandated wokeness. The NBA festooned its sidelines with the phrase “BLACK LIVES MATTER”—a

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is only one true moral side in American politics. In the summer of 2020, that truth became crystal clear. In response to the death of George Floyd while in police custody, massive protests involving millions of Americans broke out in cities across America. Never mind that even the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s

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, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in US History,” NYTimes.com, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. 6. Craig Mauger and James David Dickson, “With little social distancing, Whitmer marches with protesters,” DetroitNews.com, June 4, 2020, https

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to ask people if they’ve attended a protest,” BusinessInsider.com, June 15, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-contact-tracers-not-asking-people-attend-george-floyd-protest-2020-6. 15. “COVID-19 Hospitalization and Death by Age,” CDC.gov, August 18, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data

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/entertainment/archive/2019/08/dave-chappelle-doubles-down-sticks-and-stones/596947/. 39. Jordan Hoffman, “Dave Chappelle Releases a Passionate and Raw Comedy Set, Making George Floyd Protests Personal,” VanityFair.com, June 12, 2020, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/dave-chappelle-releases-a-passionate-and-raw-comedy-set-making

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-george-floyd-protests-personal. 40. Lorraine Ali, “Review: Dave Chappelle’s new special isn’t stand-up. It’s an anguished story of violence,” June 12, 2020,

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https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-06-12/dave-chappelle-846-youtube-netflix-george-floyd. 41. David Sims, “Hillybilly Elegy Is One of the Worst Movies of the Year,” TheAtlantic.com, November 23, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive

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-decline-points-to-broader-trouble-in-tv-watching. CHAPTER 7: THE FAKE NEWS 1. Richard Read, “Attorney for Minneapolis police officer says he’ll argue George Floyd died of an overdose and a heart condition,” LATimes.com, August 20, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-08-20

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/george-floyd-derek-chauvin-defense. 2. “988 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year,” WashingtonPost.com, Updated January 26, 2021, https://www.

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March into Beverly Hills, Loot Stores on Rodeo Drive,” CBSLocal.com, May 30, 2020, https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/05/30/rodeo-drive-protest-looting-george-floyd/. 4. Jonathan Lloyd, “Dozens of Businesses Damaged at Flashpoint of Violence in the Fairfax District,” NBCLosAngeles.com, May 31, 2020, https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news

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-leaves-downtown-l-a-stunned. 6. “NYC Protests Turn Violent,” NYTimes.com, May 31, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/nyregion/nyc-protests-george-floyd.html. 7. Isaac Stanley-Becker, Colby Itkowitz, and Meryl Kornfield, “Protests mount and violence flares in cities across US, putting the nation on edge,” WashingtonPost

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protests will cost insurance $2 billion after violence erupted in 140 cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death,” DailyMail.co.uk, September 16, 2020, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8740609/Rioting-140-cities-George-Floyds-death-cost-insurance-industry-2-BILLION.html. 12. Lois Beckett, “At least 25 Americans were

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31, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled. 13. Ebony Bowden, “More than 700 officers injured in George Floyd protests across US,” NYPost.com, June 8, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/06/08/more-than-700-officers-injured-in

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-george-floyd-protests-across-us/. 14. https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1267877443911778306. 15. Virginia Allen, “New York Times Mum on ‘1619 Project’ Creator Calling ‘1619 Riots’ Moniker

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.theblaze.com/news/chris-cuomo-protests-peaceful-constitution. 18. Andrew Kerr, “Here Are 31 Times the Media Justified or Explained Away Rioting and Looting After George Floyd’s Death,” DailySignal.com, September 4, 2020, https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/09/04/here-are-31-times-the-media-justified-or-explained-away-rioting

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-and-looting-after-george-floyds-death/. 19. Tonya Mosley, “Understand Protests as ‘Acts of Rebellion’ Instead of Riots, Marc Lamont Hill Says,” WBUR.org, June 2, 2020, https://www.wbur

Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable

by Joanna Schwartz  · 14 Feb 2023  · 422pp  · 114,817 words

police sometimes egregiously abuse their authority. And these videos only scratch the surface of injustices that occur. Before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck, on May 25, 2020, many others died beneath the knees of police officers. Before Louisville police officer Myles Cosgrove fired sixteen times into

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a search warrant at the wrong house, the law still won’t be “clearly established” and those officers can receive qualified immunity too. Just as George Floyd’s murder has come to represent all that is wrong with police violence and overreach, qualified immunity has come to represent all that is wrong

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, and West. * * * — Shielded not only describes the many barriers that keep people from getting justice through the courts; it also offers a path forward. Since George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, debates about police reform have focused so intently on qualified immunity that it might seem as if the future of

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, invariably, the country’s attention has been drawn elsewhere and the conversation has gone quiet. When the world watched Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd, the conversation began anew. In some ways, it felt different that time around. Police chiefs around the country immediately, publicly, and unequivocally condemned Floyd’s

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the problem of police violence, and inspired the convening of President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. In 2020, the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor prompted ambitious police reform proposals in Congress and statehouses across the country. During these six decades, some proposals for reform have been

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prior court decisions “did not put the constitutional question beyond debate.” This could also have been the fate of a lawsuit brought on behalf of George Floyd’s family. Qualified immunity never threatened Floyd’s family’s ability to recover money for his murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in May

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1983 case against Derek Chauvin should be dismissed because Floyd’s family could not point to a prior case with nearly identical facts. But if George Floyd’s case had not received the press scrutiny it did and had not inspired the same degree of public attention and rage, a lawyer for

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’s complaint detailed enough to overcome Iqbal’s plausibility pleading standard and get to discovery. But in July 2020, six weeks after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, the trial court dismissed Vicki’s case. The judge assumed that the officers who killed Tony violated the Constitution, but granted them qualified immunity because

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that the Dallas officers who killed Tony were trained about the dangers of this very maneuver. Perhaps the judges were moved by the similarities to George Floyd’s murder, or by the sympathetic facts of Tony Timpa’s case. Perhaps the judges were responding to widespread and growing criticisms of qualified immunity

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, a finding that Vallejo violated the Constitution might create additional political pressures that could help hasten meaningful change. * * * — On June 2, 2020, as protests of George Floyd’s murder were taking over the streets and airwaves, Vallejo officers were called to a local Walgreens where there were reports of looting. As soon

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Crump—who had also made headlines for his work on behalf of the family of Trayvon Martin, and later represented the families of Michael Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others—agreed to take the Tolans’ case to trial. In Texas, when a district judge is reversed and the case is

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officers in their area, respondents’ confidence levels jumped even higher—to 76 percent in 2016. In June 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Gallup announced that public confidence in the police had dipped below 50 percent for the first time in several decades, prompting a flurry of headlines

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from liability even when they have done something plainly wrong. Officials in Greenwood Village, a Denver suburb, apparently hold this view. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Colorado passed a bill authorizing cities to require officers to contribute up to $25,000 to a settlement or judgment if they were

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to high-profile killings that inspire front-page news stories, candlelight vigils, and angry meetings with the mayor. Around the country, government officials have invoked George Floyd’s and Breonna Taylor’s names when they have enacted laws and policies limiting police power to use chokeholds and no-knock warrants. But most

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more modest than they should be. * * * — Today, debates about our system of police accountability often focus, laser-like, on qualified immunity. In the weeks after George Floyd was murdered, in May 2020, protests were punctuated with handwritten signs that protesters held aloft calling for its end. These calls were echoed in bills

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plan B. One option is to have officers pay a portion of the settlements and judgments entered against them. In June 2020, one month after George Floyd was murdered, the Colorado legislature passed a bill that does just this. Colorado’s bill requires that local governments indemnify their officers—unless they have

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the Supreme Court. Bills to end qualified immunity, among other wide-ranging policing reforms, were introduced in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd and were reintroduced in 2021. But after the House passed both bills, and after fifteen months of negotiations in the Senate, the

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George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was abandoned. Republican senators’ unwillingness to limit qualified immunity in any way was a significant stumbling block in their efforts to

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what those in power believe about the scope and severity of police misconduct and the need for accountability and reform. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, there seemed to be a shared understanding that something needed to change. That was the moment in which Colorado’s comprehensive bill made

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Lopez, “Police Officers Are Prosecuted for Murder in Less Than 2 Percent of Fatal Shootings,” Vox, April 2, 2021, www.vox.com/21497089/derek-chauvin-george-floyd-trial-police-prosecutions-black-lives-matter. The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database, which tracks prosecutions of police officers and is relied upon by Lopez

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(N.D. Tex. March 9, 2020). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT A grand jury indicted: Ryan Mills, “Tony Timpa Suffered the Same Fate as George Floyd—but Received None of the Attention,” National Review, May 6, 2021, www.nationalreview.com/news/tony-timpa-suffered-the-same-fate-as

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-george-floyd-but-received-none-of-the-attention/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT disciplinary hearing: Cary Aspinwall and Dave Boucher, “Dallas Police Officers: Mocking Tony Timpa

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’s Office in, 49–51, 62 Leesburg, 49–50 Middle District, 142–44 Orlando, 135–37, 146–54, 241 Floyd, George, xi, xiv, 14, 213 George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 234 protests for, xxi, 227 public confidence in police and, 138 reform after murder, xx–xxi, 188, 231, 234, 238 settlement

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, 127–28 warrant and, 59 Warren on, 55 Freedom Rides, 74 G Gallup poll, on police, 138–39 Garner, Edward, 63 general warrant, 52, 249 George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 234 Georgia, 7–8 Gibbons, John, 38 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 40 good-faith standard, 74–75, 253–54 Graham v. Connor

Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy

by Jennifer Carlson  · 2 May 2023  · 279pp  · 100,877 words

sparked by a more familiar terrain of racial unrest and rebellion—specifically, the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police uprisings in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Unlike their lack of experience with pandemics, Americans alive today have not only experienced waves of racial unrest but have

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in riots. Portland’s going crazy! (Nathan, white, Arizona) Whether it’s for providing for your own physical security after the government murders a man [George Floyd], or whether it’s for your own financial security when you see your business being destroyed and toilet paper running off the shelves … what they

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. Accordingly, individual vulnerability overwhelmed the racial politics that bred protests in the first place—reframing, for example, police not as perpetrators of violence (as in George Floyd’s murder) but rather as negligent protectors against violence (i.e., “the police could not do anything”). This reframing galvanized the need for gun ownership

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among purchasers who break with the stereotype of white conservative gun owners;52 according to NAAGA’s founder Philip Smith, in just 36 hours after George Floyd was murdered by police, 2,000 people joined the organization.53 By year’s end, the NSSF estimated that 2020’s sales resulted in 8

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provided newfound grist for the partisan rancor and political division seething across the globe and especially in the United States, an African American man named George Floyd was brutally strangled to death by a group of police officers in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. The slow and deliberate murder was caught on

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the pent-up result of the protracted injustice built into the US system but rather the connivance of people set on destroying American society. Maybe George Floyd wasn’t even dead—or maybe he was dead, but his death was the result of a scheme involving counterfeit money and drug trafficking in

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gun stores in his area to implement social distancing. He likewise resisted the common conspiracist assumption among conservative gun sellers that the police murder of George Floyd was being exploited for gains by unsavory actors on the American Left. Recognizing that the “civil unrest has been mostly, mostly peaceful protests, and has

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.” Likening the particular economic difficulties facing “a lot of people living in inner cities” to “gasoline,” he describes the film of the police murder of George Floyd as “the spark … you basically had gasoline all over it, [and] that spark lit it.” He reasoned, “Police keep agitating, and various people are going

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fathomed where the pandemic would take us, let alone grasped the uprisings against white supremacy and anti-Black racism spurred by the police murder of George Floyd or the riots and insurrectionist protests instigated by Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud that would come by the end of 2020 and into

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’s apartment, and he was found not guilty in March 2022. See Lovan (2022); Oppel, Jr., Taylor, and Bogel-Burroughs (2021). On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a group of police officers led by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who handcuffed Floyd and knelt on his neck for nine

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B. Wells (Johnson 2014: 81)—a sentiment reflected more recently in the motivations of Black gun buyers in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the white supremacist attack on a Buffalo, NY, supermarket in a Black community in 2022 (Bunn, 2022). For a discussion on how

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story in The Truth About Guns called for “solace in the knowledge that Derek Chauvin has been fired, arrested, and indicted for the murder of George Floyd. Chauvin will ultimately be judged by a jury of his peers. The voices of peaceful resistance have been heard. Justice will be served,” while an

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Guns likewise ran headlines that publicized instances of illegitimate violence perpetrated by leftists, liberals, and progressives; consider, e.g., “Angry Leftist Brings Rifle to Lubbock George Floyd Protest to ‘Off Racists and MAGA People’ ” (The Truth About Guns); “Pennsylvania Doctor and School Board Member Threatens to Shoot Anyone Not Wearing a Mask

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, and many also intimated that racial injustice had, at some point, been a problem in the United States. Some even outright condemned the killing of George Floyd, as Oliver described, as a “tragedy.” But only a handful—largely the handful who identified as Democrat, liberal, or progressive—recognized racism, racial oppression, and

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., Hauser, C., MacFarquhar, N., Opam, K., Taylor, D. B., Tompkins, L., and Vigdor, N. (2021). How George Floyd Died, and What Happened Next. New York Times. Accessed July 15, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html. Arango, T. and Closson, T. (2022). “We Can’t Endure This”: Surge in US Shootings Shows

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? The Truth About Guns. Accessed August 2, 2021. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/preparedness-much-enough/. Boch, J. (2020c). FEDS: Angry Leftist Brings Rifle to Lubbock George Floyd Protest to “Off Racists and MAGA People.” The Truth About Guns. Accessed October 24, 2021. https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/feds-angry-leftist-brings-rifle-to

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-lubbock-george-floyd-protest-to-off-racists-and-maga-people/. Boch, J. (2020d). Gun Owners: Be Goodwill Ambassadors to Your Neighbors, Community. The Truth About Guns. Accessed October

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. Brown, W. (2017). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books. Budryk, Z. (2020). Head of CrossFit to Staff: “We’re Not Mourning for George Floyd.” The Hill. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/501947-head-of-crossfit-told-staff-were-not-mourning-for

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