Climate Strikes

Black people are two-and-a-half times as likely as White people to catch COVID-19 and substantially more likely to be unemployed as a result of the pandemic. George Floyd, in addition to being murdered by racist police, was infected by COVID-19 and lost his job when the restaurant he worked for closed because of the pandemic.

We are in the midst of the largest mass uprising in half a century. It is a response to the killing of an unarmed Black man named George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. But it challenges a pattern of Black oppression that goes far beyond one cop killing one Black person, indeed, far beyond the issues of police abuse of the Black community.

On February 26, 2012, a neighborhood watch coordinator in Sanford, Florida, named George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed African American seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Two weeks later Zimmerman was charged with murder. Zimmerman claimed self-defense. A year and a half later he was acquitted.

Since the beginning of coronavirus lockdowns, the words “essential workers” are suddenly on everyone’s lips. Hospital orderlies, bathroom cleaners, bus drivers – until recently ignored, denigrated, and underpaid – are suddenly treated as heroes. Locked-down Americans stand in front of their houses at 7:00 pm to applaud them. Politicians give speeches celebrating them. These workers were always essential to the running of our society, but now they are being recognized as such. Recognized — but abused more than ever.