Photo credit: Virginia Small
On the morning of George Floyd’s funeral, I awoke and felt a knot in my stomach. I ate a Denny’s breakfast and swallowed my breath it felt like. I swallowed my pride, rather. I wasn’t in any mood to watch a memorial service, a memorial service which wasn’t necessary. As he lay dead in a coffin carefully and craftily prepared by his family in the city of Houston, the city in which he was born, here we were, on Earth, walking into a procession awaiting to hear words of inspiration from Rev. Al Sharpton.
And he lay dying two weeks earlier in the street as we watched on. As we watched, and from what we saw, the knee of a police officer was pressed on the back of his neck. Sharpton made a point during his eulogy that stuck with me, “You would’ve [taken] your knee off his back!” He used repetition and juxtaposition as if he was giving a monologue in a Shakespearean play. Sharpton’s words were powerful. The eulogy sent a powerful message, as all eulogies set out to do. It felt as if we were all in the place together, even though Floyd’s body lay there in a coffin. It felt like George Floyd was in the room with us. If not to be there physically and realistically, at least to be remembered. I remembered Sharpton’s speech and how I felt and carried it with me until the night.
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I was reminded of how I feel every time someone, a black man or woman, gets shot by police and the public is forced to mourn and we are forced to mourn publicly. We not only mourn, but we protest. Through all of the protesting, there is a certain sense and sadness that comes with it. It’s an unexplainable sadness and an unthinkable sense, but in hopes of finding answers to life’s most unbearable questions, we seek and we find.
This is where my city, my own city of Milwaukee, comes up in the conversation. We look through newspapers, ones like the Shepherd Express for which I am writing right now and watch the daily news on television, and every day it seems there is a new problem. Certainly, there is a problem. The citizens slain everyday are not threats to society as corrupt cops proclaim them to be. They are citizens like you and me, unique and innocent and deserving of their equal rights. Floyd, 46, played high school and college basketball in Houston where he grew up, and then when he moved to Minneapolis became a truck driver and worked at a nightclub, the same nightclub as the policeman who killed him.
No Thought of Lives Well Spent
When he died at the hands of police, they didn’t think of this life. The police didn’t think of a life well spent and deserving of friends and family and work and a home. They imagined a black body on the streets whose life couldn’t possibly matter or measure up to theirs. They didn’t think, on the fateful evening of Floyd’s slaying, that he’d miss this life, which is handed to all of us, regardless of race, class, sex, age, or other things. They didn’t imagine his body or his life. Yet, we were left, those who do, to clean up the blood on the street. We were forced to do it through tears and heartache after watching another one of our brothers or sisters lay lifeless in the streets. We were forced to imagine, to fight, to protest, every day.
At last, we can imagine our bodies and streets. This is why we protest and this is why we do it in the streets. I was having a conversation with my family about how we have never witnessed what we are witnessing today. The turmoil and the protesting.
It's not a surprise to Milwaukee—‚the grief and despair. Since the shooting of Dontre Hamilton in 2014, who had schizophrenia and was innocently sitting in Red Arrow Park when he was shot 14 times by a Milwaukee policeman, Milwaukee has been in turmoil because of these police shootings. I wrote about the aftermath. I watched a documentary dedicated to the family. I interviewed the filmmaker of the documentary. I protested. Dontre Hamilton is still innocent. Sylville Smith, a Milwaukee man of 23 years old, was shot in 2016 and his death rang throughout the city. Recently, a young teen was shot by police who suspected he had a gun as he ran out of Wauwatosa’s Mayfair Mall. Milwaukee is no different from any of the cities.
Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Florida, and Georgia are just some of the cities affected by this tragedy. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are just some of the names victim to this tragedy. And it is, a tragedy. An American tragedy, haunted by the plight of racism and inequality.
It seems that the protests shed some light on the darkness creeping upon our cities. The stories are enough. In the event that a black man or woman is murdered innocently by police, where do we draw the line? When is enough enough?
For more of our coverage of the protests occurring across Milwaukee, click here.
To read more articles by Kahrima Winston, click here.
