Mediaboss Marketing

Over the past year, American museums have been forced to consider how they might address anti-Black violence and center marginalized voices, especially when their collecting, exhibitionary, and outreach practices have historically abetted rather than challenged the social reproduction of white supremacy. While any number of institutions have made statements or proposed changes, the exhibition Promise, Witness, Remembrance at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentuckyorganized in honor of Breonna Taylor, whose murder at the hands of Louisville police on March 13, 2020 eventually spurred nationwide protestsoffers a timely, local, and pointed curatorial response to some of the most pressing questions facing cultural institutions today. To better understand how museums might reframe notions of audience, value, and the politics of belonging from an intersectional perspective, Artforum invited contributing editor Huey Copeland and the exhibitions curator, Allison Glenn, to speak about the shows emergence and ambitions a few weeks before its June 6 closing.

HUEY COPELAND: Allison, I thought Id start by asking how you came to organize this exhibition: In what ways did the process of making it demand a rethinking of your approach to curatorial practice and your understanding of the roles museums can play within contemporary cultural discourse?

ALLISON GLENN: This is a really great question. I was invited by the director of the Speed Museum, Stephen Reily, who sent me an email outlining the project as he saw it and letting me know that if I took this on, Id be working closely with [Breonna Taylors mother] Tamika Palmer as a key stakeholder. That made it clear to me that the museums priorities were in line. I had a few meetings with Stephen and the team at the Speed, and it became clear very quickly that the museum had a lot of ambition for the project.

An exhibition is one moment. Its temporal, and it cannot hold everything. So I wanted to align with Tamika Palmer and understand what she thought the exhibition could do, what it could mean for her and her daughters legacy. And Ms. Palmer is very clear. She is very generous. She is very kind, and she is very clear on what she wants. I developed the exhibitions three sections from a text message she sent me. She didnt say, Promise, witness, remembrance, but I inferred those terms from her message, and they became the title of the exhibition and the curatorial framework.

At the same time, I began building a national panel of advisers. I knew I needed a kind of cabinet of people I could trust, whom I could be vulnerable with, who could point out blind spots, and who knew me and my practice. I was very sensitive to the fact that I dont live in Louisville. Im not from Louisville. And I wanted to create this framework of solidarity. The national panel was a way of saying, We, on a national level, stand in solidarity with you. I respect the city and what its gone through so much that Im not going to show up as just me. Im going to stand in concert with a group of people who have dealt with these issues before. I invited artists Theaster Gates and Hank Willis Thomas, as well as La Keisha Leek, whose cousin is Trayvon [Martin]. We had worked together on some projects in Chicago when La Keisha was working through her understanding of Trayvons murder and how to respond to it. And then I asked a friend in town, Raymond Green, whose cousin is Alton Sterling, to join. And it just kept building.

So I had a combination of artists who had responded to the intersecting pandemics of gun violence and police brutality and private citizens who lost loved ones to those epidemics. Arguably, George Zimmerman is an extension of the state. So that is state-sanctioned violence against Black people. And I wanted an art historian who has a history with critical race studies and art of the Global South.

HC: So thats how Allison Young came on.

AG: Yes.

HC: Its interesting to hear how the project unfolded, and revelatory in terms of thinking about what the key components of this kind of exhibition are. One being: There has to be institutional will from the get-go. And then there has to be a real understanding and engagement with the communities and the people impacted by the events or issues the show explores. I really love the way you insist not only on your alignment in solidarity with Ms. Palmer, and this community of activists and thinkers, but also the way you emphasize producing another kind of collective through this advisory panel, which is brought into conversation with other kinds of discursive networks and groups that youre building on the ground. So in many ways, Promise, Witness, Remembrance seems to model, in both form and content, a Black feminist ethos of care in cultural production. I wonder if you would situate this show within that tradition?

AG: Absolutely. Its important to note that the entire exhibition was led by Black women: me; the Speeds community engagement strategist, Toya Northington; Tamika Palmer; her lawyer, Lonita Baker. Amy Sherald has been a very important force. The coacquisition of her portrait of Breonna Taylor by the Speed and the Smithsonian will have a positive impact on the Louisville community. And of course, Breonna Taylor herself is at the center of this conversation. And the Louisville protests were led by Black women.

There is definitely a culture of care. The reason we worked so closely with the Louisville steering committee and the national panel and Ms. Palmer is that theres too much at stake. There were too many ways to get it wrong, and we needed to get it right. And I would say that situating it within this larger framework is a radical act of decentering that not only decenters the institution, but also decenters my voice. So through this act of creating community, of calling people in, you in fact center them. A great example of this is de-installing the Dutch and Flemish collection, the collection the museum is known for internationally. There was one artist on the Louisville steering committee who is probably of my mothers generation. And she said she used to go to the Speed Museum in the original building, before they built the contemporary wing. She said she never saw art by people who look like her, and that she didnt feel that work by people who look like her or of people who look like her was valuable, because it wasnt in the space. Thats the impact of decentering.

Another example: When I presented my exhibition proposal to Tamika Palmer for consideration, I told her I knew that we needed to include a time line of her daughters life to tie the exhibition together. And I said, Im not the person to write it, and she said, Oh, Ill write it. She wrote a text on the walls of the gallery in which Amy Sheralds portrait is installed and therefore became the authorial and the authoritative voice in that space. During installation, there were discussions regarding whether or not we should include a label to contextualize the tone of the time line, as the institutional voice is very different than a mothers voice about her daughters life. There were good points for and against didactics. I felt strongly that we did not need to put up a label to tell people why weve given space to Tamika Palmer. That is not decentering. Decentering is giving the space. The team ultimately understood the importance and impact and agreed.

HC: I think its so important that the decentering also enables and is accompanied by a kind of revaluation, a shifting of how we understand economies of value, particularly within the context of the museum. And I think in making this kind of collectivethat is democratized, that is led by Black women, and that gives Black women priority in terms of their position in relationship to Breonna and this history and this momentit seems to me that it really starts to question how we think about the processes of valuation and devaluation that the museum represents, and how we can disrupt those by doing this work of decentering. That also involves the centering of different kinds of voices. I love that the show includes this range of contributors, from local activists to internationally renowned artists. And, of course, Ms. Palmer. Theres also this huge variety of contemporary visual modes, from street photography to abstract painting. So I wonder: How did your ambitions for the show shape the selection of works?

AG: I knew that I wanted the exhibition to take up spaceI knew I was interested in works that had a sense of scale. We were dealing with twenty-two-foot ceilings, terrazzo floors, marble doorways, these kind of regal spaces. And I wanted to think about what it might be to occupy that space physically with, for example, Terry Adkinss sculpture Muffled Drums (from Darkwater) [2003]. I also knew that many people who saw the show would be visiting the museum for the first time. And itd be people who probably didnt feel very welcome in institutionalized spaces. If youre not going to those spaces regularly, youre going to feel uncomfortable because theyre not legible. Theyre in fact quite illegible and inaccessible. I wanted people to feelno matter their relationship to museums and exhibition spacesthat they knew where they were going. And if they got lost, theyd have an anchor. Thats what led to the decision to hang the portrait of Breonna so that its directly in your line of sight when you turn the corner after entering the museum. Although its the first thing you see when you enter the exhibition space, its part of the shows closing section, Remembrance, which memorializes those lost to police brutality and gun violence.

But let me back up a little bit and talk about the Promise section. What I wanted to do there was provide a framework through which to understand the rest of the exhibition. That section is meant to drive home the truth we all know: that the United States was founded on horrible inequities, and the inefficacies of our system are inherently indebted to that founding.

I wanted to borrow from these tropes of nationalism because I think were in a moment where were dealing with a lot of tropes of nationalism and democracy yet still living in a space that does not feel democratic. There are works by Hank Willis Thomas in both the Promise section, where we installed 15,433 (2019) and 19,281 (2020) [both 2021], two flags whose stars represent those killed by gun violence in American in 2019 and 2020, and in the Remembrance section, which includes his neon sculpture Remember Me [2014]. So thats how Promise unfolded.

I wanted to create a historical framework of a century of protests for Black lives and to highlight the impact of these protests nationally and globally. AG

Artists help us understand the contemporary moment. In the Witness section, youll see a mixture of works that are timely yet enduring. Were in the midst of a global pandemic. Breonna Taylors family has not gotten the justice they seek. This section was also an opportunity to present the work that had happened during the protest, which was really important to Ms. Palmer. These galleries include artworks that respond to this moment, as well as other moments of conflict, change, and unrest in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The steering committee built this incredible spreadsheet of photographers who had been at the protest. I chose five. Breonna Taylors story includes all of these people around it, and I wanted to honor them, including the many who were lost to gun violence, such as Tyler Gerth, one of the five photographers. He was shot and killed at the protest. The show was the first posthumous exhibition of his pictures. I worked with his sisters to select the images. Jon Cherry, a local photographer, had a portrait in the show of Travis Nagdy, a young man who found his voice in the movement. As I understand it, he was meeting with elected officials and had found his path through organizing. He was shot and killed in an unrelated incident. Of course, I wanted to include a Black woman photographer. T. A. Yero took some very powerful photographs.

I hung the photographs in a linear way to create this tight time line. The first is from the day after what would have been Breonnas twenty-seventh birthday. The last is the portrait of Travis Nagdy. And its on the same plane as the portrait of Breonna. So you stand in the second gallery, and you see Travis, and you see Breonna kind of in the distance. It was very intentional to pair those two portraits. I also chose to hang the photographs tight and horizontally, knowing that Muffled Drums was going to have such height. I wanted to have the horizontal time line of photographs intersect with it. Muffled Drums commemorates [W. E. B.] Du Boiss organizing of one of the first Black-led protests for Black lives.

HC: The silent protest parade in 1917.

AG: Exactly. He organized it with the NAACP. I wanted to create a historical framework of a century of protests for Black lives and to highlight the impact of these protests nationally and globally.

HC: In the context of this national and global quote-unquote reckoning, which has brought such scrutiny to modern cultures ongoing expropriation and waste of Black lives in these spectacular ways, many institutions are finding themselves at a crossroads. Some are planning exhibitions like Promise, Witness, Remembrance. Of course, those shows and the decolonial gestures they stand for are temporary, even though what this kind of exhibition does is open a radically new, expansive framework for museums to understand what they do. And I guess one question is: How does that then become something that is institutionalized as part of the museums identity and your understanding of your own curatorial practice?

AG: I realized that this project reaffirmed for me that I am most successful working close to the ground with diverse publics. Thats not only where my strength is, thats also where my heart is. Thats where the work feels rewarding. Its challenging institutions to radically rethink the way they present ideas through exhibitions, through solo projects, through conversations, and continuing to imagine worlds where this kind of terror doesnt exist.

HC: Maybe we can close by discussing what your understanding of success is, because I think its so telling and useful for thinking about what it is that we want the space of the aesthetic and the museum and the cultural to be.

AG: Well, when you are working in consultation and conversation and collaboration, oftentimes success exists outside commonly held registers. I think for any project that seeks to bring people in, theres going to be a collective imagining and redefining of what success is. For me, the most important thing, the successful moment in this exhibition, was that Tamika Palmer was pleased. She said she felt the exhibition was a blessing and that she felt peaceful walking into the space and seeing Breonnas portrait and her time lineIm paraphrasing her. She felt seen and she felt heard. That, to me, was the greatest success.

Huey Copeland is a contributing editor of Artforum and BFC presidential associate professor of history of art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Allison Glenn is an associate curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and its satellite space the Momentary.

Excerpt from:
Huey Copeland and Allison Glenn on Promise, Witness, Remembrance - Artforum

Clarence CrossJr.changed his route after police pepper-sprayed an Army lieutenant on the same highway he often traveled.

Teia Brown feared for her daughtersafter Sandra Bland was pulled fromher car by police and days later ended up dead in a jail cell.

Donya Collins worried about her safety after Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watchman on his way back from the store.

USA TODAY talked to Black Americans across the country about moments ofviolence that resonated with them and had a lasting impact. For some, the death of George Floyd at the hands of police one year ago on May 25, 2020,was one of those moments. There were many others.

The moments reminded them, they said, how vulnerable people of color are and how justice hasn't always been served. These high-profile attacksleft them fearful of police, suspicious of othersand worried for their lives and the safety of their loved ones.

Boots On The Ground: The Black community in Minneapolis finds peace after George Floyd

The Black community in Minneapolis, connected through trauma, is activated by the Derek Chauvin verdict in the ongoing battle for justice.

Jarrad Henderson and Harrison Hill, USA TODAY

What binds all this together is the false promise of civil rights in this country for Black Americans, said Jason Williams, assistant professor of justice studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The reason why police can pull us over, discriminate against us and kneel on our beings is because they understand that this country still doesn't take our citizenship, our rights, our positionality in this country seriously.

Racial violence in the United Statesisnt new.

The country has a long history of violence against Black people, from the torture of enslaved Africans to lynchingsduring the Jim Crow era to the brutal beatings and killings of protesters during the civil rights movement. Some veterans of the civil rights movement say it was Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy murdered in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after being accused of flirting with a white woman, that spurred them into action.

Watching the death of Floyd and other Black men and women exacerbates existing fears about encounters with police, Williams said. And with social media offering unfiltered views, more people can witness state-sanctioned deaths right before their eyes, he said.

The smokescreens are now annihilated, Williams said. For Black Americans, it's like, Well, this is what we've been living our entire 400-and-plus years here.

After Blands death, Brown worried more about driving alone or through a white neighborhood where she said you can feel the eyes on you.

Bland, a Black woman, was found dead in a Texas cell in 2015 three days after a traffic stop by a white state trooper.

At the time, Brown sat on the edge of her bed and watched the newscast. It made her nervous, fearful and sad. She prayed Blands family would find peace. She prayed white police officers would stop killing Black people.

How could she have been thought of as a threat? Brown, now 59, wondered. Why are they pulling her out of the car? What is she doing? She's a woman. Stop! That could be my daughter. It could be me.

Years later, Brown, a retired information assistant in Camp Springs, Maryland,doesnt watch the videos posted on social media of unarmed Black men and women being shot or killed by police. She worries her husband, Rob, could be next.

She still gets angry remembering clerks who followed her in stores. Im like dude, I have a pocket full of cash ... Why are you doing this to me?

Sisters Sandra Bland, left, and Sharon Cooper in 2015, the year Bland died in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, after a routine traffic stop.Family photo

The mother of two daughters called it absolutely frightening that one day her children will no longer live in her house and may encounter danger.

How do I protect them or keep them from being victims? she said.

She doesnt understand why some people feel threatened by her brown skin and why they dont understand Black people are trying to strive and thrive just like everybody else.

When will they get it? she said. What is it about my blackness or our blackness that scares you so much?

More: Derek Chauvin trial in George Floyd death compared to Rodney King case 30 years later

More: 'A form of terrorism': Ahmaud Arberys murder is just the latest painful reminder of Georgia's dark history of lynchings

Cross takes a different route now when he drives from his home in Washington, D.C., to visit family in North Carolina. And as a Black man, he said he wont dare take another trip alone across the country.

Clarence Cross, Jr., a retired Veterans Affairs hospital chaplain, said he wouldn't travel alone across the country anymore because as a Black man he feels it's too risky. (Photo courtesy of Clarence Cross, Jr.)Courtesy of Clarence Cross, Jr.

It would be too risky, said Cross, 73, a retired VA hospital chaplain. Im fearful of what could happen.

Cross overhauled his road trip habits after he watched the video of Army Lt. Caron Nazario being pulled over by local police in December, pepper-sprayed, then ordered to lie on the ground at a gas station in Virginia.

It made Cross relive his own experience when he was also stopped along the U.S. Route 460 by a local officer about three years ago while he was traveling home after visiting family in North Carolina.

Cross remembered the officer approached his car and immediately unsnapped his holster. Cross said he was so upset by that move he angrily questioned the officer.

I thought that was over the top, recalled Cross, who said he didnt realize the speed limit in the small town had changed from 55 mph to 35 mph. I said, Why are you doing that? I'm not a threat to you.'

He said his friends later scolded him, calling him crazy for challenging the police officer and warning he could have been shot. Cross said he was issued a ticket for reckless driving. His lawyer challenged the ticket, which he said was reduced to a lesser offense.

Watching Nazarios encounter earlier this year stirred up that anger again. You realize it could have been you, he said.

Cross, who served two years as a policeman in the Army, said he knows in his heart of hearts that not all policemen are bad. But he was trained to tell people why they were being stopped. That didnt appear to happen with Nazario.

I know that we are treated differently and the potential is always there to get harassed or whatever, unnecessarily, he said.

More: Police killings of Black men in the U.S. and what happened to the officers

Anastassia Doctor was planning an outing with girlfriendswhen a news alert popped up on her cellphone that Philando Castile had been killed by a police officer in Minnesota. The day before on July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling had been fatally shot by a policeman in Louisiana.

It was like I had just woken up from the Matrix, recalled Doctor, who at the time was stationed at an Army base in Hawaii. It was like, Where have I been?'

She texted her friends. Many of them had Black sons. You know they killed another Black man, right?

Anastassia Doctor joined a rally in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, last summer after the death of George Floyd.Courtesy of Anastassia Doctor

Doctor, 46, was bothered that her friends werent more upset. She never spoke to them again.

I was like, Wow, they could just hunt us down and kill us and nobody's going to say anything? she said.

Doctor joined chapters of Black Lives Matter and the NAACP when she moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, two years later.

While Doctor recounted police shootings of other Black people, she said the deaths of Castile and Sterling are burned into her memory in part because they were caught on video.

Sterling, who was selling CDs outside a store in Baton Rouge, was shot by a policeman six times, including three times in the back. Police said Sterling was found with a gun. One of the officers was fired in 2018 after an excessive force investigation.

Castiles girlfriend captured part of the encounter on Facebook when an officer shot him in a car in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Her daughter was in the back seat.

It was more traumatizing, recalled Doctor, who now lives in Springfield, Virginia.

She said Floyds death also made her angry. A video showed Derek Chauvin, a former police officer, kneeling on Floyds neck for more than nine minutes.

All of us felt powerless, she said.

The trauma, said Doctor, is made worse when focus shifts to the history of the person killed.

There's never a perfect victim when you're talking about Black people, she said. They're going to find something, some reason why you deserve to die.

Nicholas Gibbs was in the middle of a piano lesson in Los Angeles when his mother abruptly sent his teacher home. News broke that the white police officers who beat Rodney King had been acquitted and the city was burning.

Gibbs sheltered at home for days. He remembers the fire, the anger.

Gibbs was about 11 years old when he watched the video of King being beaten. Even at that age, he knew it was wrong.

It was about him being Black, he said. It was on camera and it was obviously unnecessary.

Soon after, Gibbs learned that a Black girl in Los Angeles not much older than him, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, had been killed by a Korean store owner, Soon Ja Du.

Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, but instead of jail time she was placed on five years' probation with 400 hours of community service, a $500 restitution and funeral expenses.

The feeling at the time was that our lives didnt matter, recalled Gibbs, 40. Things could happen to us and nothing would happen to the perpetrators.

After the acquittals in Kings case, his mom, an immigrant from Belize, explained what he needed to do so that what happened to King wouldnt happen to him: Be calm, follow the officers directions, dont do anything that could give police a way to assassinate your character.

On May 1, 1992, Rodney King pleads for the end of rioting and looting that plagued Los Angeles after the verdicts in the trial of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating him.David Longstreath, AP

She did make me feel like because youre Black you have to be better, Gibbs said.

The lessons sunk in when he started driving as a teenager. They are lessons Gibbs, a teacher in Texas, still uses to ensure he makes it home to his family each night.

You just hope your game plan works, he said.

The day before her eighth birthday, Kadiatou Tubman saw her name on the television for the first time. A woman also named Kadiatou was onthe news because her son, Amadou Diallo, had beenshot to death by police. Diallo had immigrated to New York City from Guinea, just like Tubmans mother.

Four white officers said they feared for their lives because Diallo drew an object that looked like a gun. It was a wallet. All four were charged with second-degree murder amid protests and later acquitted in the Feb.4, 1999, shooting.

Tubman, 30, said it wasnt until she had her first encounter with police a few years later that the pain Diallos death caused her community became personal.

On a warm, almost-summer day, Tubmans mother rushed her and her siblings home from school in a panic. When they arrived at their fifth-floor Brooklyn apartment, their landlord was standing at the door with a police officer. They were being evicted.

The eviction and the five years her family spent in the shelter system inspired Tubman to become a housing advocate. Tubman, who works at a Black history and culture research library, teaches students about less talked about ways policing affects them, including eviction.

Seeing what I saw on the news with police brutality and then coming home to have police officers remove us from our home, it just awakened something in me, said Tubman, who still lives in Brooklyn. I was like: OK, I am Black. This is what its like to be Black in America.

In 2013, K.W. Tulloss helped organize a rally in Los Angeles after a jury thousands of miles away in Florida acquitted George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon.

That was even more of a slap in the face, Tulloss recalled.

Tulloss, who then headed the western region of the National Action Network, a social justice group, had tracked the 2012 case since he saw news reports that Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Florida, had shot and killed Trayvon, who was 17 and Black.

Trayvon had gone to the store for Skittles and was walking home when he was confronted by Zimmerman. During an altercation, Zimmerman shot Trayvon, who was unarmed.

This was literally the moment that really opened up my eyes to the ugliness of hatred in our country, said Tulloss, 43, pastor of Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Racism was still alive and well. It was just in a new form. … People werent afraid to shoot no more. They were hiding behind the law of justice, justifying profiling.

Zimmerman was acquitted of charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter the next year.

Tulloss said like many he had been hopeful race relations had improved, particularly after the country elected Barack Obama its first Black president. But Zimmermans acquittal showed otherwise, he said.

Jaylen Reese, 12, of Atlanta, marches to downtown during a protest of George Zimmerman's not guilty verdict in the 2012 shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, Monday, July 15, 2013, in Atlanta.AP Photo/David Goldman

Many of us were optimistic that this was a post-race society, Tulloss said. Well, it seemed like, no, this was the coming-out party for racism.

And it's coming back out, he said.

Tulloss said Floyds death and the protests that followed came as many people were already in a moment of righteous indignation about the police shootings of other unarmed Black people.

Enough is enough, he said. We have to turn our anger into passion. We have to really change laws.

More: More work to be done: Derek Chauvin murder conviction brings relief, resolve to keep fighting for justice in George Floyd's name

Collins stormed out of the house, sat in the yard and cried. A jury had just acquitted Zimmerman of all charges, and it felt as if a stone had been dropped onto her stomach.

Her mother held her to her chest. How am I going to go to school and live my life? she asked her mother.

Youre going to pray before you go out every day that youll be able to come home, her mother told her.

Collins saw herself in Trayvon.

It set in that they could really kill me and get away with it, said Collins, a 20-year-old Black woman from Indianapolis. I realized Im not safe anymore. I realized that the people I love arent safe. ... I will remember that moment until the day I die.

Eight years later, Collins worst fears came true when she saw her childhood friend staring back at her on the news.

In May 2020, an Indianapolis police officer shot and killed 21-year-old Dreasjon Reed during a pursuit captured on Facebook Live.

Opinions on news, race & identity from a panel of diverse Gen Z hosts

Collins mom used to work with Reeds. She has known him since she was 7 years old. He bought her fries when she forgot her lunch money. When they were older, they babysat their younger siblings and played video games.

It hurts in a way I never knew I could hurt, she said. Your heart cracks, and it breaks you. I watched my friend die.

Collins prayed for Black people not to be killed. She prayed for God to take the world out of peoples hands and fix it. She prayed for a miracle that I know will never come.

She lives with the trauma of that moment.

Every day I live in some sort of fear, she said. Every time I see a cop car, I get a pit of anxiety in my stomach.

Continue reading here:
George Floyd. Trayvon Martin. Sandra Bland. For many Black Americans, these deaths and others have caused lasting trauma - USA TODAY

He died in less than nine minutes, gasping for air before lying motionless on the concrete without a pulse.

People across the country, especially in the Black community, recoiled in horror as video evidence of the police brutality careened across the internet and TV screens. Thousands of protesters would soon surge into the streets, powering up a movement that had been brewing for years.

The murder of George Floyd was nothing new; this one had simply been laid bare for the world to see. And the nation cried out for justice.

Around 8 p.m. on May 25, 2020, the 46-year-old Black man was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes from Cup Foods in Minneapolis.

After the arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, shoved Floyd to the street and knelt on his neck. Pinned to the pavement, Floyd pleaded for his mama. He told Chauvin and three other officers, Im about to die. Please dont kill me. Chauvin, 45, simply told Floyd to relax.

I cant breathe, Floyd replied. Please, the knee in my neck, I cant breathe. He would repeat that he couldnt breathe no fewer than 20 times before he eventually took his last breath, lost consciousness and died.

It wasnt the first time the phrase was uttered by a Black man during an encounter with police. Printed on thousands of T-shirts and banners, it had already become a well-known rallying cry in the movement to fundamentally transform policing and end police violence against the Black community.

In 2013, Eric Garner voiced 11 times that he, too, couldnt breathe after he was wrestled to the ground and put in a chokehold by a New York City police officer on suspicion of illegally selling cigarettes.

Garners death came a year after George Zimmerman, who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on Feb. 26, 2012, was acquitted after claiming self-defense against the unarmed Black teen.

Protesters march from Columbia City Hall to the South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina, on May 30, 2020, to protest the killing of George Floyd. (Credit: Crush Rush/Alamy)

Outraged, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi founded the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Few thought the movement had staying power.

But in 2020, tens of thousands of people would march in solidarity for Floyd and BLM in demonstrations that spanned the globe, making it one of the largest movements in history.

The movement inspired the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the U.S. House in early March and is being negotiated in the Senate. The legislation would ban chokeholds and end qualified immunity the legal protection that limits victims ability to sue police officers for misconduct. The law would also ban no-knock warrants in federal drug cases while mandating data collection on police encounters.

Additionally, the law would create a nationwide police misconduct registry that would help hold problematic officers accountable. Whats more, it would redirect funding to community-based policing programs while prohibiting racial and religious profiling.

To Benjamin Crump, the civil rights lawyer who represents Floyds family, the movement has highlighted what we, as a nation, have always known.

There are two justice systems in America: one for white America and the other for Black America, Crump told the Southern Poverty Law Center. Police brutality against Black people has always existed in our country, but the video of Chauvin slowly taking the life from George Floyd has left a lasting mark on the minds of many Americans.

Benjamin Crump, left, joins Gianna Floyd, daughter of George Floyd, and her mother Roxie Washington, as they speak with reporters following a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House on May 25, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

The lasting mark on the Black community was illustrated by a jump in depression and anxiety. Data from the Census Bureau showed that the rate of Black Americans showing signs of anxiety or depressive disorders climbed from 36% to 41% within a week after the video was released. Even today, the Black community is still waiting to exhale.

David Hodge, operations coordinator for the SPLCs Civil Rights Memorial Center and a Black man, said he lives in a constant state of doubt.

Every Black person that I know can tell you a story of police brutality or misconduct that has either impacted them personally or someone that they know, said Hodge, 34. This reality touches everywhere, so for me, there is a degree of uncertainty as to whether Ill be treated in accordance with the law. That is an uncertainty I have to live with.

In the year since Floyds death, fear and uncertainty within the Black community have become unavoidable enemies that swim in the depths of the subconscious.

George Perry Floyd Jr. was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and raised in Houston. In 2014, he moved to the Minneapolis area, where he lived in the suburb of St. Louis Park.

While the video of his murder was shocking and galvanizing for the reform movement the brutality was simply part of a pattern that has been out of public sight until recent years.

Police violence, anti-Black violence, police brutality, theyre not getting worse, theyre getting filmed, said Dr. Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor of English at the University of Virginia and a founding member of BLM in Charlottesville. There are always going to be folks who are absolutely fine with the disposability of Black people. For some, the marginalized will always be an acceptable loss in a democracy.

Indeed, from the Civil War and the fight to uphold white supremacy and the enslavement of millions of Black people, to Bloody Sunday of the civil rights era, when Alabama state troopers attacked unarmed marchers with clubs and tear gas, to the 1992 riots in Los Angeles after four policemen were acquitted of the beating of Rodney King, history has a way of repeating itself.

In a sad twist that is a reality for many, Woolfork a Black woman says she wasnt surprised by Floyds murder.

That doesnt mean that I wasnt wounded or harmed, however, she said. There is a way in which trauma and violence are regularly doled out to Black people, and it shows up in a variety of ways physical violence, or the type of violence that shows up in apathy. Police operate in conjunction with the state and under an umbrella of anti-Blackness that is lethal for Black people of all ages and genders.

In 2014, after BLM was founded, the nation witnessed the murder of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer.

More killings followed, and the victims became household names: Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark and Breonna Taylor. About 10 miles from where Chauvin was on trial for Floyds murder, Daunte Wright was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop.

As of May 25, Newsweek reported that 229 Black people in the U.S. have been killed by police since Floyds death, according to the research group Mapping Police Violence. As one area mourns a victim, yet another death happens.

Crump, the Floyd familys lawyer, clings to hope a deep faith that the movement can and will catapult the nation into a new era.

Hope is and must always be at the center of our efforts, Crump, 51, said. Hope that justice will prevail. Hope that good people of all races, creeds and colors will speak up and speak out when they see injustice. Hope that a reckoning has begun in America both in its people and in its institutions. If I did not have hope, I would not be able to continue the fight for justice.

But all know that hope is only a necessary mindset.

Hope isnt an action, said Woolfork, 51, whose classes at the University of Virginia explore systemic inequity, racism and white supremacy. Things can be animated by hope, thats a gesture, but Im not of the opinion that hope will get us to the other side. What will free us are the actions, the changes in policy and accountability for wrongdoing. This is the bare minimum.

Echoes Hodge, There are moments when I struggle to find hope.

An independent autopsy, ordered by Floyds family, found that Floyd died by homicide caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain.

Chauvin was arrested on May 29, 2020 four days after the murder.

Officers are trained and sworn to protect and serve, Crump said. Who was Chauvin protecting? George wasnt a danger to anyone. He was begging for his mother, begging for air. How could Chauvin be innocent?

On March 12, a $27 million settlement for Floyds family was approved. And on April 20, as National Guard troops deployed in anticipation of possible violence in Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington, D.C., a jury found Chauvin guilty on all three charges against him second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The jury got it right, Crump said. Those who still say Chauvin is innocent are basing that belief not on the evidence but on their rush to conclude that a white man would have done nothing wrong in killing a Black man. While the jury verdict doesnt erase centuries of wrong, it does give hope that Georges death can truly be an agent of change across America.

But are the settlement and the verdict justice?

True justice would require the impossible: George back alive, living in the embrace of his loving family, Crump said. But I believe his family sees the verdict as a measure of justice for George. Nothing can ever bring George back, but the verdict and the settlement were important steps in the fight for justice for all of us.

In addition to seeking police reform, the BLM movement has also pushed to remove the iconography of white supremacy the Confederate monuments, the public schools named for Confederate generals and other such symbols that are part of the landscape in this country, particularly in the South.

That movement began in earnest in 2015, when a young white supremacist killed nine Black people at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina. Floyds death and the BLM movement gave it new momentum. In an update of its Whose Heritage? report, the SPLC reported in February that at least 168 monuments and other Confederate symbols have been removed from public spaces since Floyd was killed and more than 300 since Charleston. Some statues were yanked down by protesters; others were removed by local authorities.

Yet, some states have enacted laws that punish local officials for removing symbols that represent an era of racial oppression and brutality whose legacy we continue to see in deaths like Floyds.

Black lives have always been taken from us, Crump said. Black men, women and children are killed every day. I think Georges case put a microscope on the ongoing genocide of minorities in our country.

Woolfork said that instead of acting on petitions to remove Confederate monuments, legislators and legislatures are seeking to enshrine white supremacy.

Theyre calling it heritage, she said. Its not heritage, its hate.

Street art on the side of a building in Minneapolis honors George Floyd. (Credit: Michael Siluk/Alamy)

A year after Floyds murder, racial equity seems out of reach for many Black people who live in fear of the next traffic stop.

As for what Floyds murder taught the nation, Hodge said that we can no longer excuse transgressions by police.

We cannot look away or distract ourselves from the consequences of anti-Blackness and police brutality, he said. Floyds death is a reminder that the systemic devaluation and dehumanization of Black lives has very concrete implications.

Woolfork said the nation must recognize that racism is the countrys original sin and that anti-Black violence at the hands of the state and the nation is not a relic of the past but rather a present threat to be confronted.

Everything surrounding George Floyds murder opened eyes that had for far too long been closed, Crump said. We can only hope we must hope that the lesson for law enforcement agencies is to do better at respecting all individuals they encounter.

Photo at top: People continue to lay flowers on April 6, 2021, at the George Floyd Mural in Houstons Third Ward, where Floyd grew up. (Credit: Sipa USA/Alamy Live News)

View original post here:
His Last Breath: A year after George Floyd's murder, nation reckons with history of racism, police brutality - Southern Poverty Law Center

On October 26, 2020, police killed Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia, as his mother stood on the sidewalk, pleading for his life. Over the next few days, the neighborhood erupted in protest and my phone lit up with alerts from Citizen, a public safety app. Writers for the app monitor and transcribe police scanner chatter, which is then converted into push notifications. There was a break-in at Rite Aid, a burglary at a nearby liquor store, a dumpster fire one block over, a trash fire 900 feet away.

As local news has been decimated by budget cuts and layoffs, apps like Citizen and Nextdoor have ascended to fill the void. Citizen in particular has increasingly positioned itself as a news organization. "We act fast, break news, and give people the immediate information they need to stay safe," reads an overview on the company's LinkedIn profile. Citizen often ranks higher than The New York Times among news apps in the Apple store.

In theory, the platform democratizes reporting; it allows anyone with a smartphone to post comments and videos to a neighborhood network. But in practice, these alerts and the neighborhood commentary attached to them often read like police stenography and amplify existing biases. Users are bombarded by discordant notifications of violence, devoid of meaningful context.

Last November, I deleted Citizen from my phone, grossed out by the tenor of the push alerts. But in March, curious about a nearby apartment fire, I downloaded the app again. This time, when I created an account, I was prompted to sign up for a new feature, Citizen Protect. For just $19.99 a month, a virtual safety agent would track me whenever I left my house. If I said my chosen safe word, the safety agent would start a video chat and, if necessary, send my exact location to a 911 call center. The service promised me that help from Citizen's community of users would always be close at hand. "Live monitoring," the ad said, "means you never have to walk alone." (At this point, it seems Citizen Protect is currently only being promoted to some Citizen users. A Citizen spokesperson told me they were aiming to fully launch in mid-June but that they could not comment further at this time.)

As an illustration of what the app would look like in action, I was shown a faux, promotional push alert for a lost dog. More than a thousand people had been alerted about the dog, the screenshot suggested, and 475 people were looking for it.

It is not difficult to imagine the many ways such a system could go wrong, particularly in a neighborhood like West Philadelphia, where in 1985 the city's police bombed its own citizens, members of the Black separatist organization, MOVE. The bombing killed nearly a dozen people and destroyed more than 60 homes along two city blocks. In May of last year, during protests over George Floyd's murder, Philadelphia police drove an armored vehicle into the mostly Black neighborhood and teargassed residents, while the next day, a violent mob of White men roamed Fishtown largely unimpeded. An app like Citizen Protect is aimed at my demographic: I am a White woman, living in a gentrifying neighborhood, who sometimes goes running after dark. If I felt ambiguously threatened by a fellow jogger a Black man, for the sake of argument and alerted my Citizen safety agent and the broader Citizen community, what would happen to him?

I signed up for a free trial of Citizen Protect in order to test out some of the features. What I learned did little to inspire faith that the app would protect everyone equally.

In many ways, Citizen's new Protect feature marks a return to the company's roots. Citizen began as a crime-fighting app called Vigilante that launched in 2016. An ad for Vigilante shows a woman being followed and then assaulted under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. She calls 911 and her call is transcribed by a Vigilante operator listening in on the police scanner. An alert "Suspicious Man Following Woman" is received by a guy playing chess, a rideshare driver, and a man working in a bodega. These three men arrive just in time, conveniently in concert with the police, and two of them shove a camera in the attacker's face just as the perpetrator is knocking the woman to the ground.

The New York Police Department condemned the app, which was subsequently removed from the Apple store. It relaunched the following year as Citizen, a more innocuous app for the professional bystander. (According to The New York Times, the NYPD spokesperson who condemned Vigilante now works for Citizen.)

Citizen's new Protect service features safety agents who, according to one recent job listing, "triage the level of severity of each call and make appropriate assessments of necessary next steps." The agents are required to "offer support and guidance in real-time to any user who feels unsafe." The job qualifications are minimal customer service experience is a priority and experience working as a first responder is a plus.

Citizen connects you to a safety agent call center when you click a button that reads "Get Help." The first agent I spoke with told me that she was able to monitor my exact location, pace, phone battery, and presumably had I connected my phone to, say, an Apple Watch or Fitbit my heart rate. Another safety agent, Erin, told me that if I added emergency contacts, they would be able to alert those people if I were ever in trouble. "Let's say you got into a car accident," said the safety agent, "if you asked us to contact 911 and your emergency contact contacts even if we had to hang up the phone because 911 had arrived and you were being stabilized we could then reach out to your contact, to let them know what's going on."

As cities face a rise in murder rates and budget shortfalls, this Uber-for-private-security feature feels like an ominous sign of what's to come during the post-pandemic recovery. Covid-19 killed nearly 600,000 people in the United States over the past year, while the government put down uprisings for racial justice across the nation with a heavily militarized police force. The post-pandemic landscape feels both hopeful and post-apocalyptic. What has become clear over the last year is that safety in this country is just an illusion. How much would you be willing to pay for that illusion, though? To some, $19.99 a month might seem reasonable.

A feature like Citizen Protect strikes me as mass surveillance disguised as a public good, poised to funnel generalized fear into something more nefarious. It will almost certainly lead to unnecessary police stops and, inevitably, to police violence. It will likely encourage vigilantes like George Zimmerman, who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.

In the wake of the 1918 pandemic and World War I, the U.S. moved into the Roaring 20s, a period characterized as much by debauchery and cultural development as it was by income inequality and punitive policing. The Pinkertons, a private detective agency known for strike-breaking, and for serving as a goon squad for the wealthy, were omnipresent. If we are now entering our own Roaring 20s, it seems a new kind of Pinkerton is coming with them.

* * *

Rebecca McCarthy is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She's on Twitter @reemccarthy.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Excerpt from:
As neighborhood watch apps ascend, so do the threats they pose - Salon

NEWARK, NJ A key toward achieving racial equality in communities could come through means of reform in policing and public safety, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka highlighted during a panel discussion with former President Barack Obama.

Baraka was joined on Wednesday by the former U.S. president and community leaders across the nation to participate in a conversation hosted by My Brother's Keeper Alliance, aimed to share ideas and best practices to continue to center racial equity," the activism the country has seen since George Floyd was killed, and the need to revamp public safety.

The virtual discussion came just a year after the tragic death of Floyd, when a viral video of former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin was seen kneeling on his neck which led to his death. Protests and rallies erupted nationwide in the following weeks, including Newark, as calls rang out for social justice and policing reform.

Sign Up for Newark Newsletter

Our newsletter delivers the local news that you can trust.

You have successfully signed up for the TAPinto Newark Newsletter.

During Wednesday's discussion,Baraka notedthat measures for reformhavealready been undertaken in his city for years through a consent decree agreement.

[The consent decree] was a good thing for our city, and we began to push to begin putting reforms in place in our police department, immediately, Baraka said.

Under the consent decree, an agreement which Newark police and the U.S. Department of Justice entered into in 2016, it served as a shift for the citys authorities to improve their quality of policing through various facets of training and reforms.

Since Newark police entered into the agreement, they have reported several improvements in their policing efforts.

In a quarterly consent decree report, it highlighted that city police and its monitoring team have made considerable efforts to establish remote auditing capabilities while pandemic-related restrictions on in-person meetings remained in place.

The report also highlighted a decision from the police earlier this year to issue body cameras for all plainclothes officers after Det. Rod Simpkins shot and killed a man minutes into New Years Day - an incident investigators said was difficult to assess due to a lack of footage from the scene.

Last year, the city moved nearly $12 million of its public safety budget into a newly-created Office of Violence Prevention as a means to impede hate activity and violence within Newark. The plan is to close the Newark Police Departments 1st Precinct by Dec. 31 and transition the building into a museum chronicling local activism in Newark and positive police changes. It will also hold a trauma center for health recovery and healing, and workforce development.

Newark police also established two Community Service Officers in each of the city's seven precincts. Officers are responsible for addressing the needs within the neighborhoods they serve.

In order to quell more incidents of violent crimes, the mayor pointed to notable changes made under the consent decree and by bringing police and community together.

Making sure that police are part of the larger public safety strategy as opposed to the only public safety strategy, he said. It doesnt mean we dont have any mistakes or problems But we are continuing to get better because we are working together collaboratively to make sure we reimagine what public safety looks like.

However, as the unjust killings of Black people in the country persist, Obama explained that the work of communities nationwide hasnt necessarily solved the issue of racial injustice just yet.

Touching on the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old unarmed African-American from Miami who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman during an altercation, the former president said he hopes to see proven efforts in the public addressing racial injustice come to fruition.

We have seen people come together to not just talk about the problem, but to try and come up with concrete solutions and implement those solutions, Obama said. What I have consistently drawn inspiration from is to see how the process hasnt been static but has continually evolved with people learning from what works and what doesnt work, pushing the envelopes of what is possible and challenging all of us to see how we can do better.

Here is the original post:
Newark Mayor Highlights Transformation of Public Safety During Panel With Barack Obama - TAPinto.net