As protests for George Floyd spread throughout the U.S., Salt Lake City, the quiet capital of Utah, has become boisterous with Black Lives Matter chants as another group of protestors demand justice for Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal, who was shot and killed by the Salt Lake City police.
The coronavirus swept the country, forcing me and almost everyone everywhere into quarantine – with shelter-at-home orders, remote learning for kindergarten-through-college classes and entire industries and small businesses shut down. I’m a creature of habit, but I’m adapting. Still, this change is different – scary, even – with health risks, uncertainty, rising death tolls and limited social contact with the outside world.
But life in lockdown has had one silver lining for the Taku family. It has forced my family – all six of us – to eat dinner together at the dining room table almost every night.
Irving and Neymar are similar in their diva personalities. They want all eyes on them and feed on the adulation of carrying their teams to victory. Their dribbling skills and flashy play draw crowds and their diminutive frames allow their agile, quick bodies to drift past opposing players with ease. But their lack of definitive success, mixed with their tendencies to showboat and reject teammates, make them luxury players who end up hurting their teams more than they help.
It is now brought to public memory that perhaps we are reentering The Gilded Age — an era marked by rapid prosperity, technological advancements and economic growth, its golden exterior of prosperity disguising the destitution within.
I remember sitting in my grandmother’s home in Jamaica, in the sweltering heat, confused as to why George Zimmerman was acquitted after killing Trayvon Martin.
I was twelve.
Since then, countless people have died at the hands of police — their killings preserved on dashcam or bystander video, while many others were never filmed.
An officer on the front lines of the Minneapolis protests has been put on two weeks paid leave after he failed to fire pepper balls at a local news crew. The Internal Affairs Committee for the Minneapolis Police Department confirmed that Percy Cutor had decided not to fire on reporters even though they had identified themselves as press and were wearing safety vests.
The grotesque, inhumane, evil killing of George Floyd has burst the dam of Black Patience again. Black people are appalled. Black people are pissed off. Black people are fed up. Black people are heartbroken. But most of all, Black people are tired.