It’s been five years since the life of the greatest of all Americans was cut short and Tim Walz reminds us that we should “honor him”:
What have we actually done for Americans like George Floyd? The Boston Globe says that $1 billion was spent in Maskachusetts and there is nothing to show for it.
The most significant change to American society since May 2020 is that the borders were fully open for about four years, thus leading to a massive increase in low-skill immigration. In addition to at least 4 million green cards (permanent residence) issued (“legal immigrants”), there were approximately10 million undocumented migrants (combined total of more people than live in New York City and Los Angeles put together). “Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER 2007):
For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points.
That same immigration rise was also correlated with a rise in incarceration rates. For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise.
Readers: What are you doing to honor George Floyd today?
Related:
- “How the Right Has Reshaped the Narrative Around George Floyd” (New York Times, May 24, 2025), which points out that it is a right-wing lie for anyone to say that George Floyd had a criminal record (the NYT certainly does not list any examples of crimes in which Mr. Floyd might have been involved)
- Apple reminds us about the “sacred” nature of today:
Indeed, NPR led this morning with the important George Floyd recap, Two Jews murdered last week in D.C.…already much further down in the news cycle.
While Governor Tim Walz honors and reminds us to remember George Floyd, let us remind the governor that, “Murders plummet nationwide, but rise in Minneapolis” [1].
There are many other tragic incidents involving both violent and non-violent Black folks who lose their lives at the hands of Blacks within their own communities, yet these stories rarely receive national attention — maybe 2 or 3 days as local news. I guess BLM is mute when Blacks-kill-Blacks?
[1] https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/01/02/murders-plummet-nationwide-but-rise-in-minneapolis/
Minneapolis is still “mostly murder-free” in that the average person doesn’t get murdered every year.
Congratulations to Mr Floyd for being 5 years sober today!
For Phil and his followers of this blog. Praise Derek Chauvin, defender of justice . You can read about his extraordinary career at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Chauvin.
I don’t think a person of virtue would want to criticize the decisions of Democrat-run Minneapolis within Democrat-run Minnesota to continue to employ Officer Chauvin year after year leading up to the George Floyd encounter.
We know that no mistakes were made by Democrats because the Mayor and Governor today are the same Democrats who were running the city/state in 2020.
@philg employing Officer Chauvin has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican . These decisions are driven by union contracts. Historically majority of Police unions endorse Republicans. Even though most of the republican law makers and governors does not like labor unions but they go out of there way to support police unions.
Minnesota has a Democrat governor and a Democrat-controlled legislature. The rulers of Minnesota could, tomorrow, eliminate the ability of police officers to unionize. States are sovereign. There has been a lot of federal encroachment on states’ rights, but states still have the right to ban or permit collective bargaining by their nominal public servants.
https://www.vox.com/2019/6/25/18715531/public-sector-government-workers-union-bill-congress says “Government workers don’t have a federal right to unionize.” North Carolina straight up prevents collective bargaining by public employees and police there are not unionized, as far as I can tell.
Even without any changes to union policy, Officer Chauvin could have been removed from the streets at any time prior to 2020 via a promotion to a desk job.
@philg , not only does Minnesota have a Democratic governor and a Democrat-controlled legislature, but they also have the backing and support of groups like BLM in support of the “defund the police” movement — a campaign that gained significant momentum following the George Floyd incident [1].
@Anonymous, are you suggesting that when a Black person is killed by a White person / officer, it is too significant and worthy of remembrance and even iconized but when far more Black individuals are killed by others within their own community, it is somehow less significant? [2] I don’t see the same level of remembrance or public attention for the many other killings that have occurred in Minneapolis.
And what about Tyre Nichols, who was killed by five Black police officers [3]? Has his case received the same level of national attention and remembrance as George Floyd’s? Do you praise those 5 black officers, defender of justice?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police
[2] https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/01/02/murders-plummet-nationwide-but-rise-in-minneapolis/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tyre_Nichols
@George my point is not who killed whom instead police should be accountable for their actions. They are here to service and protect us not to be trigger happy. Right now police thinks they above law and they lie in their reports. If you look at most of the reports they file in these kind of cases they are false and lie. I am not looking at the skin color of the officer or the victim.
Anon: I agree with you that police should not be unionized and said as much on May 29, 2020: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/05/29/if-they-hadnt-been-unionized-would-the-minneapolis-police-have-killed-george-floyd/
My 2020 blog post links to a 2017 story by state-sponsored NPR in which they note that unionization and police killings are correlated. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/869176943/police-unions-and-civilian-deaths
@Anonymous, thanks for clarifying your point, but it doesn’t say anything about the point I’m raising. Governor Tim Walz, other politicians, Black leaders, and much of the liberal media continue to spotlight George Floyd, while the many other Black individuals killed by members of their own communities receive little to no recognition.
Also, the phrase “to serve and protect” is not a police mission, it was originally coined by the LAPD [1][2], and doesn’t reflect the role of law enforcement across the country. For example, here in Maskachu$etts, officers take the following oath [3].
[1] https://www.policemag.com/patrol/article/15350066/to-serve-and-protect
[2] https://mypd.joinlapd.com/MOTTOMISSIONVALUES/
[3] https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleV/Chapter33/Section24