[ George Floyd was committed to being a person that mattered. But
he was also Black, so he could never catch a break. As he got older
the police were always at the ready. The day Chauvin murdered him was
not the first time he had met Chauvin. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

I JUST READ HIS NAME IS GEORGE FLOYD  
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Zillah Eisenstein
June 1, 2022
Medium
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_ George Floyd was committed to being a person that mattered. But he
was also Black, so he could never catch a break. As he got older the
police were always at the ready. The day Chauvin murdered him was not
the first time he had met Chauvin. _

Mural portrait of George Floyd by Eme Street Art in Mauerpark
(Berlin, Germany). The mural was completed on May 29, 2020.,
Singlespeedfahrer

 

His name is George Perry Floyd.

His friends call/ed him Perry.

The world calls him George Floyd.

His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial
Justice
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By Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
Penguin Random House; 428 pages
May 17, 2022 
Hardcover:  $30.00; Large Print Paperback:  $32.00
ISBN 9780593490617  --  ISBN 9780593607633
 

Penguin Random House
When he was young, he was kind, present, caring, thoughtfully
intelligent, and told his friends he wanted to be somebody, to make a
difference. “’Sis, “I don’t want to rule the world; I don’t
want to run the world. I just want to touch the world.” (p. 10) He
thought maybe he could be a Supreme Court Justice

He grew up in the Cuney Homes housing project in the third ward, in
Houston, Texas. The third ward was poor working class. His early life
was defined by Reaganomics. George lived most of his life in Texas.
Texas has the most mean-spirited laws of any state. No Medicaid
assistance.

And Texas laws forbid “former felons” from holding many jobs,

or receiving food assistance like food stamps. (p. 159) Texas insured
recidivism. Maybe if he lived in a different state his life would have
been different. Maybe.

His arrest record shows over twenty incidents. His first conviction
was 1997; he did not get his diploma in 1993 — and maybe that was
the beginning of his downturn. As he cycled through the prison system
about 1/3 of Black men were part of jail, parole or probation in
Texas. (p.105) The penal system is burgeoning alongside his personal
life.

People’s stories matter. They tell the particulars of a human being.
Structures define us but we are always more than that part of the
story.

Which comes first? The person or the structure of racism and/or
misogyny and/or class privilege that they are born into? There is
no _first_ because the embeddedness of who we are is inseparable
from what we might become and that does not negate the fact that there
can be huge variety. There are usually constraints, and a little bit
of choice, but not always, and often not.

Each of us is a person, and each of us is in a structural system of
power beyond our own individual story. The authors of _Geroge
Floyd, _Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, show us that he was
“suffocated” by a system in which he could not breathe.

Floyd’s great-great-grandfather was enslaved — Hillery Thomas
Stewart — yet amassed wealth and land only to have it stolen through
fraud and deception like so many other Black farmers during the early
19th century. Perry died for allegedly using a counterfeit 20-dollar
bill.

As a black boy he was always big — ending up at 6’6” — and 225
pounds. His body was a problem especially because he was Black. And
his Black body defined his choices. The only work he could get was:
manual labor, bodyguard, security. (p. 210) He tried to get jobs and
hold onto them but then came Covid and he could find nothing.

He always knew, even as a boy, that people saw him as big and Black so
he always tried to soften himself, to let people know he was not his
body. He tried to soften himself for others by telling just about
everyone that “he loved them”. It was his greeting. He closed
phone calls with friends: “I love you”.

He was surrounded in his childhood and beyond by his mother,
grandmother, 9 aunts, and two sisters. His last words, the day he was
brutally killed was — “Moma I love you”.

George Floyd was committed to being a person that mattered. But he was
also Black, so he could never catch a break. As he got older the
police were always at the ready. The day Chauvin murdered him was not
the first time he had met Chauvin. Rumors said that Chauvin had a beef
with Floyd; Floyd’s drug counselor said he had complained about
Chauvin for years. (p.298) From 2014–2020 Chauvin had complaints for
using neck restraints repeatedly but was never punished. Eight of the
people he assaulted survived, the ninth was George Floyd. He did not.
(p. 153)

His back pain from football injuries led to opiods and getting hooked
on Percocet. His addiction was always in play — he fought it and won
and succumbed over and over, like so many.

Drug record. Arrest record. Addiction. In one of his recovery groups
the facilitator would have all the men say: “I am loveable! I am
important! I am valuable! I am empowered! If only. He said often: “I
know these cops just waiting to kill a big Black nigga like me”.

He was claustrophobic so he always had problems in small spaces —
police cars, jail cells.

Perry was _always_ at risk. For being Black. For being an addict.
For having a police record. He knew he was _always_ at risk and had
to manage himself as best he could. Sometimes he ignored the risk just
to be able to do the day.

So many Black people on his death day said: he could have been my
brother, my father, my son. To know that is to be _really_ close to
the pain. And then there were already Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner,
Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice.

George Floyd’s murder took eight minutes and 46 seconds; then that
was reconstructed as nine minutes and 29 seconds. I would say it has
been centuries. The whole world has watched his death. It is so
important to know a bit of his life so we know more what was lost and
what must be found in order to finally abolish racist misogyny. This
book brings us all closer to the pain and closer to a damning
condemnation of the murderousness of structural racoism.

And, I now want a book that tells the intimate and political story of
Sandra Bland and another for Bryonna Taylor. Each were determined and
directed in their interesting lives. They died and were killed because
of egregious racist misogynistic policing. Tell these stories so that
we, especially white people, will no longer need them told. Read, and
listen and hear what is being told and begin the abolitionist work
needed to free us all.

Thank you for this book.

#BeyondPolicing

#AbolitionDemocracy

#FreeUsAll

#AbolishRacistMisogyny

_[ZILLAH EISENSTEIN [[link removed]] has been
Professor of Politics at Ithaca College in New York for the las 35
years and is presently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence. She at
present writes regularly for Al Jazeera.com and FeministWire.com.
 Throughout her career her books have tracked the rise of
neoliberalism both within the U.S. and across the globe. She has
documented the demise of liberal democracy and scrutinized the growth
of imperial and militarist globalization. She has also critically
written about the attack on affirmative action in the U.S., the
masculinist bias of law, the crisis of breast cancer and AIDS, the
racism of patriarchy and the patriarchal structuring of race, the new
nationalisms, corporatist multiculturalism, and the newest gendered
and classed formations of the planet._

_She writes about her work building coalitions across women’s
differences: the black/white divide in the U.S.; the struggles of Serb
and Muslim women in the war in Bosnia; the needs of women health
workers in Cuba; the commitments of environmentalists in Ghana; the
relationship between socialists and feminists in union organizing; the
struggles against extremist fundamentalisms in Egypt and Afghanistan;
the needs of women workers in India, the work conditions of young
women in the Foxconn factories in China, and the organizing of migrant
women workers in Indonesia.]_

* George Floyd
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* Black Lives Matter
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* #BlackLivesMatter
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* BLM
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* #BLM
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* African Americans
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* police murders
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* Racism
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* Systemic racism
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* Critical Race Theory
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* Black History
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* Minneapolis
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* Police
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