Patrisse Cullors - Rolling Stone "American Plague: Racism, our untreated pre-existing condition, is killing both black people and the nation itself"
Rolling Stone | June 1, 2020
“It was just a week ago now that Derek Chauvin, then still employed as a Minneapolis police officer, pressed his left knee into the neck of George Floyd for what, on video, seemed like an interminable amount of time. It was a total of eight minutes and 46 seconds, nearly three minutes of which were after Floyd became unresponsive, long after pleadings like ‘Please, I can’t breathe’ and ‘Mama’ went silent.
Hennepin County’s district attorney, Michael Freeman, listed that precise timing in the criminal complaint he filed Friday. He charged Chauvin, the only one of the four officers involved who authorities have arrested thus far, with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. This move didn’t slow down the protests a bit, perhaps because they are about more than Floyd’s death. Political strategist Patrisse Cullors, the founder of Reform LA Jails and one of the co-originators of the Black Lives Matter movement, told Rolling Stone after Chauvin’s arrest, ‘In order to have true accountability we must defund the police and redirect those dollars to a national health care system. We have prioritized an economy of violence and terror over an economy of care.’
Cullors’ remark only underscored what a public-health crisis police violence remains. That was increasingly evident in the preliminary details from the county medical examiner’s autopsy, appearing at the end of Freeman’s complaint: ‘no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.’ (The Floyd family requested an independent autopsy, and early findings released Monday contradicted the medical examiner. His death was the result of ‘asphyxia due to neck and blood flow to the brain,’ with the weight placed on his back and his body positioning also being contributing factors.)”
Follow the link above to read the full article on Rolling Stone.