Mourners pay tribute to George Floyd as protests continue,
WASHINGTON— Rev. Al Sharpton’s eulogy for George Floyd, at a memorial service in Minneapolis, reached an emotional crescendo of triumphant shouting. “Go on home, George! Get your rest, George! You changed the world, George!”
It was a message both personal and political at a service for a man whose life was remembered by his family as full of love, and whose death under the knee of a police officer has galvanized a movement for racial justice.
His brother Philonise spoke of his life: “Everybody loved George.”
Sharpton spoke of his death: “What happened to George Floyd happens every day in America, in education and health services and every area of American life. It’s time for us to stand up in George’s name and say, ‘Get your knee off our necks.’ ”
Earlier, the president of North Central University, where the service was held, said he hoped it would be a “table of healing” for Floyd’s family, and also for a nation needing to “repent, not just restore.”
Philonise Floyd remembered the days he and his brother did laundry in the sink, and how George could make all the people he met in the street “feel like they were the president” with his generosity of spirit. Floyd’s youngest brother, Terrence, after sharing his own memories, made a request now familiar to those around the country from chants at street protests: “Can y’all please say his name?”
Those in attendance, including the governor of Minnesota and members of Congress replied: “George Floyd.”
Sharpton called out U.S. President Donald Trump directly, directing him to open the Bible he’d held up in an infamous photo-op this week, and to read from the book of Ecclesiastes, where it says there is a time and aseason for everything — and to realize that the time for change has arrived.
“I’m more hopeful today than ever,” he said, noting that after a long career in the civil-rights movement, the recent crowds were younger, many white people were marching, and international protests were being held in solidarity. “This is a different time. It’s a different season,” he said.
That feeling, that something has changed in the wake of Floyd’s death to make real change possible, was not only
“We won’t stop, we’re going to keep going until we change the whole system of justice.”
REV. AL SHARPTON
being felt inside the room, but across the country. Just as those at the memorial service observed more than eight minutes of silence to commemorate the length of time an officer’s knee was on Floyd’s neck, they observed the same silence in the California legislature, and Democratic senators did so in the Capitol building in Washington. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced she’d introduce a police reform bill on Monday.
The former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, wrote this week that an “inflection point” had been reached over Trump’s conduct in the wake of the protests.
He was joined soon after by Trump’s former defence secretary, James Mattis, who said the president’s militant response to the protests makes “a mockery of the constitution.” On Thursday, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Mattis’s comments were “true, and honest and necessary and overdue,” and that the time had arrived when members of the president’s party would feel the courage to speak up about their concerns about Trump. Every living former president has publicly said that the protests are an occasion to address racial injustice — George W. Bush said in a statement: “It is time for America to examine our tragic failures.”
Trump has resisted embracing the same message. While calling for “justice” for Floyd’s “brutal” killing, he has portrayed it as an isolated incident and avoided tying it to wider police conduct or race relations, while continuing to emphasize a militant response to demonstrators he’s characterized as “terrorists” because of some of the violence and vandalism that have broken out. Late Wednesday, the heads of military branches, including the current chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent out messages to their service members reminding them that they are sworn to protect the constitutional principles of racial equality and the right to protest — messages perceived as responses to Trump’s incendiary rhetoric.
There’s reason to think the general public may be responding to the messages the same way. In addition to polls this week showing the majority of Americans are sympathetic to the protesters, a wave of election polls, especially from swing states, showed Trump falling behind Joe Biden amid the recent protest crisis. A Fox poll even showed the two candidates tied in Texas, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1976.
When the protests and the looting and vandalism that initially accompanied some of them began, Trump appeared to be seizing the opportunity to try to look strong and in charge by cracking down — many thought he saw it as an escape route from the political crisis of coronavirus he could not control.
Now, even as protesters, politicians and activists speak of change being at hand, Trump has shown no signs of changing his approach.
Trump has responded to the wave of military and political criticisms by jousting with some of these critics on Twitter. On Thursday, Trump’s campaign sent out a fundraising message based on standing up to protesters. “The Left-Wing MOB is trying to DESTROY communities around the Nation, and Sleepy Joe’s campaign is only fuelling the fire,” it read. “THESE RIOTS MUST END.”
There were no riots in Washington on Wednesday — and no reported arrests of any kind after what the mayor said was the largest protest yet, with crowds reaching 5,000 near the White House in a night of singing and inspiring moments. As a result, there was no curfew imposed on Thursday. Protests were expected to continue there and in other cities.
As Sharpton said at Floyd’s memorial service, “This is the time: we won’t stop, we’re going to keep going until we change the whole system of justice.”