“Protesting Works. Rioting Doesnt.” was the headline from National Review on Friday May 29th.
Demand accountability for George Floyd’s death, yes, but don’t romanticize rioting, now or ever.
The tragic death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis has set off massive protests in the city and elsewhere. The protesters point to a video in which a police officer uses his knee to restrain Floyd, applying pressure to his neck for several minutes, as Floyd protests that he can’t breathe. This will remind any politically aware person of the death of Eric Garner in New York City in 2014.
While New York City waited five years before firing the police officer in the Garner case, Minneapolis moved more swiftly, firing all four officers who were responsible for detaining Floyd the next day. Soon after the firings, protesters hit the streets, demanding justice for Floyd in the form of arresting the officers and charging them for their apparent misconduct. On May 29, one of those officers, Derek Chauvin, was taken into custody.
National Director Thomas Robb, of the Knights Party, based in Harrison Arkansas said, “The arrest of Derek Chauvin came too swiftly, just to quell the violence of an out of control Black mob. The facts of the case weren’t even all in yet. Yes, the video looks bad, but now today, Saturday May 30th, the coroner report comes out and says that George Floyd didn’t die of asphyxiation or strangulation. He died of underlying health issues. This, after officer Chauvin has been charged with murder. If a white man was to rob a bank, and the police held that criminal down with the same procedure officer Chauvin did to George Floyd, and this white man had heart issues and died at the hospital of a heart attack, would the arresting officer be charged with murder? America has become too sensitive to the demands of the non-whites who don’t even belong here.”