What is Justice for George Floyd?
by John Lawrence, June 4, 2020
I just listened to the Reverend Al Sharpton's rousing eulogy for George Floyd. He said we want justice for George Floyd. All over the world people want justice for George Floyd. Even in bombed out Syria, an artist painted a wall honoring George Floyd. That's significant. It's not justice for George Floyd here in America. It's justice for George Floyd all over the world. That means justice for George in the Middle East, justice for George in Iran, justice for George Floyd in China, in Russia. So what would justice be? Reverend Al quoted Ecclesiastes, "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal." So what would this justice be?
For sure criminal justice system reform. Let's start with a national ban on carotid restraint, a national ban on the knee-to-neck restraint. Yes, but that's not enough. I feel that all this protest energy might just be dissipated unless there are concrete demands on the system. Where is Bernie Sanders when we need him now? He had concrete demands: a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of student loan debt. Most of the protesters both black and white are millenials, the most screwed generation in American history. But who among them would most benefit from these progressive demands? African Americans. They are the Americans who not only suffer from the criminal justice system and the law enforcement system, they are the ones who most suffer from poverty as it was made clear George Floyd's family did. Reforming the criminal justice system is not enough. Reforming the economic system is necessary to redress the grievances of first slavery, then Jim Crow and now the videotaped deaths of so many black people that generated the Black Lives Matter movement.
Black Lives Matter in terms of equal economic justice and millenial lives, both black and white, weighed down with student loan debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, matter as well. A country which supports a bloated military bureaucracy that consumes a trillion dollars a year while there is 20% unemployment represents a knee on all our necks. Justice for George Floyd has to extend to justice for all those innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria. Justice for George Floyd is justice for the 70 million people, half of them children, in refugee camps. Justice for George is justice for all the poverty stricken in favellas and barrios who can't socially distance. Justice for George Floyd is American acceptance of the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Human Rights which include economic as well as political rights.
Justice for George Floyd is justice for people all over the world: black, white and all shades in between. Justice for George Floyd is justice for people without regard to race, religion or national residence. Justice for George Floyd is electing leaders of our country who will make friends instead of enemies, who will convert swords into plowshares, who will create peace and justice in the world.
