‘We were all George Floyd’
We were in the midst of a deadly pandemic. It was risky.
The decision to organize a rally was not taken lightly, said Joanna Swomley, co-founder of Indivisible Greenwich, acknowledging the pandemic. “We’re here because there’s a movement going on today that has a chance for real change,” she said. “It requires our presence and our help to sustain it.”
The Greenwich rally for justice — estimated attendance 1,000 — was among some 60 such events in Connecticut on June 6, with the nation everywhere crying out for social justice.
Ever since the weekend of March 14 when the virus forced us into the shelter of our home, my husband and I have been scrupulous about following recommended measures for staying safe, super-cautious due to our age — my husband late eighties, I late seventies — and some underlying conditions.
After a 12-day hospitalization six years ago, on oxygen, with a virus (negative for flu) that attacked my respiratory system, the idea of contracting COVID-19 terrifies me. Intubation, ultimately unnecessary, was considered. Hospitalization was followed by a twoweek rehabilitation at Nathaniel Witherell, my strength slow to return.
Despite my terror of contracting the virus, I walked to Greenwich Town Hall Saturday, June 6, dressed in black as instructed, masked, on my way to the Indivisible Greenwich rally.
The death toll from the effects of social injustice, poverty, and systemic racism that have impacted people of color for generations was a greater concern. The pandemic has exposed this inequity, most notably in health care. It pervades every aspect of American life: housing, nutrition, education, employment, earning opportunity, and life expectancy.
Congressman Jim Himes, a speaker at the rally, noted the connection between ZIP code and destiny. Research indicates those raised in disadvantaged communities will likely remain disadvantaged, and vice versa, those born advantaged will likely increase their advantage, belying the notion of equal opportunity that’s inherent in the American Dream.
And then there’s the insurmountable disadvantage of skin color. George Floyd’s murder exposed the persistent and systemic racism that’s an ugly, bloody, intractable stain permeating the fabric of our nation, a stain that continually resists efforts to remove it. Might it be different this time? George Floyd’s murder has sparked a national awakening to this racist reality. Why? There’s nothing new about white people murdering black people. There’s nothing new about black people dying at the hands of police. What makes this murder our wake-up call?
Oppressed in this land for four hundred years, black people have been continuously subjected to dehumanization, oppression, and brutality. It took a century after slavery’s end in 1865 for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, ending the Jim Crow laws that institutionalized post-Reconstruction segregation and oppression.
Another half century has passed, and we’ve replaced Jim Crow with police intimidation, a racially charged criminal justice system, and mass incarceration. White America now dominates by criminalizing the symptoms of social inequity and injustice. A century and a half after slavery, we’re far from realizing that elusive American Dream, a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all.
And yet there’s hope that this murder will bring change.
The Rev. Thomas Nins, senior pastor at First Baptist Church and a speaker at the rally, observed that we’ve experienced George Floyd’s death as the murder of a fellow human being. We experienced this horror regardless of our race, religion, or ethnic background through the video, shown countless times around the world, in which we suffer the agony of life being choked from a fellow human being under the oppressive knee of a police officer, whose casual manner, hand in his pocket, reveals depraved indifference to a dehumanized black life.
“I can’t breathe, man, please ...” At least 16 times George Floyd was heard saying, “I can’t breathe ...” Then, “Mama ... Mama ...”
As we watched George Floyd’s life being slowly, deliberately, cruelly pressed out of him in those excruciating eight minutes and 46 seconds, we all struggled together to breathe. Through our shared humanity, we were all George Floyd.
Risky to attend, yes, but how could I not be present? In the face of injustice, it’s not acceptable to be a bystander when we’re called to take action. It’s the soul of our nation that’s at risk.