From the archives:
Divrei Nechama, Chizuk and Hisorerus from President JB [with slight embellishments]:
Today, in the Oval Office, I met with George "Gershon Nimrod Ben Chava" Floyd’s family after a siyum hashas was made li-ilui nishmaso. His daughter Gianna finished Maseches Niddah and read the Hadran [a future "Matan scholar" if I have ever seen one!! She didn't even trip up on the pasuk בְּהִתְהַלֶּכְךָ תַּנְחֶה אֹתָךְ בְּשָׁכְבְּךָ תִּשְׁמֹר עָלֶיךָ וַהֲקִיצוֹתָ הִיא תְשִׂיחֶךָ as so many others do!!].
Although it has been one year since their beloved brother and father was murdered, for the family – for any family experiencing a profound loss – the first year can still feel like they got the news a few seconds ago even though we know that גזירה על המת שישתכח מן הלב אחר י"ב חודש. And they’ve had to relive that pain and grief each and every time those horrific 9 minutes and 29 seconds have been replayed.
Yet the Floyd family has shown extraordinary courage, especially his young daughter Gianna, who I met again today. The day before her father’s funeral a year ago, Jill and I met the family and she told me, “Daddy changed the world.”
He has.
His murder launched a summer of protest we hadn’t seen since the Civil Rights era in the ‘60s – protests that peacefully [🤣🤣 - he actually said that. Too good to make up!!!!] unified people of every race [INDEED!!! The USA is truly unified!!!] and generation to collectively say enough of the senseless killings.
Last month’s conviction of the police officer who murdered George was another important step forward toward justice. But our progress can’t stop there.
To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between the vast majority of the men and women who wear the badge honorably and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. We can and must have both accountability and trust and in our justice system.
The negotiations on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in Congress are ongoing. I have strongly supported the legislation that passed the House, and I appreciate the good-faith efforts from Democrats and Republicans to pass a meaningful bill out of the Senate. It’s my hope they will get a bill to my desk quickly. If I can find my desk and get there without tripping.
We have to act. Being a politician means being an actor. We face an inflection point. The battle for the soul of America has been a constant push and pull between the American ideal that we’re all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart.
At our best, the American ideal wins out.
It must again.
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What about stopping all the crime????????? Criminals kill countless more people innocent people than police officers do. No. Criminals aren't the problem. Police officers are. INSANNNNEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just a gentle reminder from an article written after his death:
The Associated Press captured the moment in all its regal splendor: “The funeral capped six days of mourning … in three cities. … After the service, [his] golden casket was taken by hearse to the cemetery. … A mile from the graveyard, the casket was transferred to a glass-sided carriage drawn by a pair of white horses. A brass band played as his casket was taken inside the mausoleum.”
JFK? Churchill? Ronald Reagan?
Nope. George Floyd.
The past two weeks have been nothing short of tumultuous, so perhaps it was unsurprising that such an unaccomplished man with such a violent and lawless past [he went to jail numerous times and a look at George Floyd’s profile as per court documents reads like a career criminal involved in drug abuse, theft, criminal trespassing, aggravated robbery as well as entering a PREGNANT woman’s home and pointing a gun at her stomach while his cohorts looked for drugs and money] would command such a stunning send-off. It was a funeral attended by hundreds of people at a time when, thanks to the pandemic shutdown, countless other Americans were unable to attend or even have funerals for their loved ones. But this is the country we live in. “Everybody is going to remember him around the world,” said George’s brother Rodney. “He is going to change the world.”
“I do not support George Floyd and the media depiction of him as a martyr for black America,” declared Candace Owens in a viral video she shared just days after Floyd’s death. Owens, whose 18-minute missive has since been seen more than 60 million times, also made an observation that she credits to conservative thinker and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele — an observation that would seem to explain the near-deification of George Floyd: “We [blacks] are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community that are up to no good.”
The media, for its part, is clearly complicit here. After all, were it not for the exhaustive and over-the-top coverage, we’d never have heard of Michael Brown or Eric Garner or Freddie Gray. In a July 2000 speech at the NAACP National Convention in Baltimore, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush was making a point about education when he referred to “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” But he might just as well have been making Candace Owens’s point.
Let’s be clear and unequivocal: George Floyd didn’t deserve to die. But just think: Had he not (allegedly) tried to pass counterfeit money to a local merchant, he’d still be alive today. Perhaps had he not had fentanyl and methamphetamines in his system at the time of his arrest, he’d still be alive. But beyond that, at least 17 other Americans who died during the ensuing looting and rioting would also be alive. And untold storefronts and small businesses serving inner-city communities would still be intact. And ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News could’ve aired their regularly scheduled programming yesterday afternoon.
Another funeral will be held today, but the deceased man won’t command nearly the attention afforded George Floyd. His name was David Dorn, he was 77, and he served 38 years with the St. Louis Police before retiring as a captain. During the early morning hours of June 2, he was gunned down as he tried to protect a friend’s pawn shop from looters.
“The fact that he was protecting and serving,” said Dorn’s son Brian, “this is the way, I feel in my heart of hearts, that he would have liked to leave this earth.”
David Dorn leaves behind a wife and five children, a life and legacy worth celebrating, and — forgive us — a case for martyrdom far stronger than that of George Floyd.
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Or from another piece written by a black professor:
As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors.
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species.
