by Mark Epstein and Michael Dixon
“Mama, I love you … I can’t do nothing … Tell my kids I love them … I’m dead … I can’t breathe … ”
—George Floyd, May 25, 2020
This month marks five years since the movement for justice and Black Lives surged like a tidal wave after George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer. Chauvin did not make a split-second decision that cost Floyd his life; he kneeled on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes. The incident was videotaped by a bystander, and the murder sparked a racial reckoning across the nation and the world.
The Seattle Police Department responded to the local nonviolent demonstrations and protests in the wake of Floyd’s murder with tear gas, pepper spray, flash bang grenades, and arrests. Floyd’s murder brought about passionate calls for justice. It brought millions into the streets worldwide and lip service promises of “DEI” initiatives from corporations.
Now, five years after Floyd’s killing and the subsequent racial awakening and unified calls for justice, police killings have actually increased year after year since 2020. And despite the supposed “defunding of police,” law enforcement budgets nationwide, including here in Seattle, have continued to climb.
For the BIPOC community, not much has improved in terms of policing. Why not? The community does not trust the police to protect them. The unsolved murder of Amarr Murphy-Paine at Garfield High School last year is just one example of the failure of police to gain community confidence. Similarly, unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people proliferate. Meanwhile, masked, plainclothes officers are making immigration arrests.
We need to change the orientation of policing from patrol and control to the role of peace officers, who both serve and become members of our community. We need a security force that is based in compassion and does not begin or end with guns and control; an entity that, in fact, serves and protects everyone. Community control of the police would replace control by the state and hand that over to the people. This is what the Black Panther Party tried to implement over 50 years ago.
Education will also play a role in pushing society forward by teaching people the historical context of racial discrimination and its relationship to law enforcement. Programs like Black Lives Matter in Schools, the 1619 Project, and the Zinn Education Project have helped many thousands of educators diversify the perspectives in curriculum and rethink American history and power dynamics in our schools.
Justice will prevail. George Floyd has entered our consciousness; he is no longer among us, but he will remain a symbol for justice. The COVID-19 pandemic gave people a desire to see a better world as we came out of isolation and our collective isolated thinking. People united together in the streets to protest and demand justice. The tidal wave of awareness from 2020 has seemingly subsided. Now we must reengage — a united society is the greatest threat to repression and oppression.
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Michael Dixon was a nerdy scholar-athlete who worked as a legislative intern in Olympia and with The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Student Union at Garfield and the University of Washington. Recently, he retired as a security specialist from Seattle Public Schools. He’s currently a happily married father and grandpa.
Mark Epstein is a retired though still subbing longtime Rainier Beach Social Studies teacher. He is a longtime union activist, loving life as a husband, father, grandfather and community member.
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