george

4Dec

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Jobs Are Up! Wages Are Up! So Why Is George The Economist So Gloomy?

In any other time, the jobs news that came down on Dec. 2, 2022, would be reason for cheer. The U.S. added 263,000 nonfarm jobs in November, leaving the unemployment rate at a low 3.7%. Moreover, wages are up – with average hourly pay jumping 5.1% compared with a year earlier. So why am I not celebrating? Oh, yes: inflation. The rosy employment figures come despite repeated efforts by the Federal Reserve to tame the job market and the wider economy in general in its fight against the worst inflation in decades. The Fed has now increased the base interest rate six times in 2022, going from a historic low of about zero to a range of 3.75% to 4% today. Another hike is expected on Dec. 13. Yet inflation remains stubbornly high, and currently sits at an annual rate of 7.7%. The economic rat...

George Floyd Deserved A Better Life. A New Book Charts His Trajectory From Poverty To The US Prison-Industrial Complex – And The Impact Of His Death

5Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

George Floyd Deserved A Better Life. A New Book Charts His Trajectory From Poverty To The US Prison-Industrial Complex – And The Impact Of His Death

George Perry Floyd, Jr. was murdered when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sank his knee into Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Video footage went viral within hours, helping to inspire protests against racism and police violence that lasted all the American summer of 2020. But while the size of the protests was unprecedented, the activism of that summer had deep roots. Journalists across the United States and indeed the world, focused attention on that history of protest, as they had done during the 2014 police killings of Eric Garner, choked to death in New York, and Michael Brown, shot in Ferguson, Missouri. Review: His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice – Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (Penguin RandomHouse) At the...

How Video Evidence Can Be Differently Interpreted In Courts – From Rodney King To George Floyd

10May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

How Video Evidence Can Be Differently Interpreted In Courts – From Rodney King To George Floyd

News media coverage of Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd highlighted the role of video as a “star witness.” Jurors in this trial saw footage from cellphones, police body cameras, dashboard cameras and surveillance cameras. In his closing arguments, prosecuting attorney Steve Schleicher even told the jurors, “Believe your eyes. What you saw, you saw.” For the past eight years I have been studying the use of video as evidence both in international human rights courts and tribunals and in state and federal courts in the U.S. As a media scholar, I pay close attention to how people interpret video as evidence. One of the things I have found is that the argument “seeing is believing” is not as intuitive as it sounds. ‘Who do you believe?’ On March 3, 1991, a Los Angeles resid...

How Media Freedom Led To Conviction In His Killer’s Trial – The Other George Floyd Story

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

How Media Freedom Led To Conviction In His Killer’s Trial – The Other George Floyd Story

When 17-year-old Darnella Frazier started recording video of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd, she initiated a series of historic events that led to Chauvin’s conviction. But for all the discussion of technology following her actions – how cellphones enable video recording of police abuse and how social media encourages instantaneous mass distribution – the key factor in George Floyd’s name becoming globally famous may not be Frazier’s cellphone. It may not even be social media. It was the culture and tradition of U.S. civil liberties and media freedom that played an essential role in protecting Frazier’s ability to record and retain possession of the video, and the capability of commercial corporations to publish it. Had the same events transpired in China, Sa...

George Floyd protests aren’t just anti-racist – they are anti-authoritarian

22Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS, SOCIAL JUSTICE

George Floyd protests aren’t just anti-racist – they are anti-authoritarian

The massive protests that erupted across the United States – and beyond – after the police killing of George Floyd are billed as anti-racist mobilizations, and that they are. Demonstrators are denouncing police violence in minority communities and demanding that officers who abuse their power be held accountable. But I see something more in this wave of American protests, too. As a sociologist specializing in Latin America’s human rights movements and policing, I see a pro-democracy movement of the sort more common south of the border. The Latin Americanization of United States Normally, U.S. protests have little in common with Latin America’s. Demonstrations in the U.S. are usually characterized by pragmatic, specific goals like protecting abortion access or defending gun rights. They r...

No justice, no peace: Why Catholic priests are kneeling with George Floyd protesters

15Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

No justice, no peace: Why Catholic priests are kneeling with George Floyd protesters

Two days after the Catholic bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, knelt with a dozen other priests in a silent prayer for George Floyd holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign, he received a phone call from Pope Francis. Bishop Mark Seitz and priests from his diocese knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to honor George Floyd, El Paso, June 1, 2020. Courtesy of Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters, CC BY-ND In an earlier era Seitz, the first known Catholic bishop to join the anti-racism protests spurred by Floyd’s killing, might have expected censure from the Vatican, which is often associated with social conservatism. Instead, Steitz told the Texas news site El Paso Matters, the pope “thanked me.” Days earlier Pope Francis had posted a message to Americans on the Vatican’s website saying he “witnessed wi...

Coronavirus deaths and those of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery have something in common: Racism

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Coronavirus deaths and those of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery have something in common: Racism

The COVID-19 pandemic and the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are two major catastrophes that shine a light on longstanding social inequities and injustices toward African Americans. Emerging research in the field of social genomics demonstrates how social stress, such as racism and discrimination, can shift the body’s biological resources toward a state that increases risk for disease. For example, our research group has found that racial discrimination may be impacting the way genes are expressed, leading to increased levels of dangerous stress hormones. These differences were found even when social determinant factors such as poverty and other forms of stress were accounted for. Hence, racial discrimination experiences may also explain why African Americans continue to remain...

George Floyd’s death reflects the racist roots of American policing

3Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

George Floyd’s death reflects the racist roots of American policing

Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes has recently resurfaced following the death of George Floyd on May 25. Video footage a bystander took of Floyd’s death while a now-former police officer pressed his knee into the man’s neck quickly went viral. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There were many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri, protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. Those precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. That upheaval happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk ...

George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery deaths: Racism causes life-threatening conditions for black men every day

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery deaths: Racism causes life-threatening conditions for black men every day

High-profile police shootings and deaths of black men in custody – or even while out jogging – bring cries of racism across the country. The May 25 death of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis and the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia on Feb. 23, 2020 by a white father and son have resulted in outrage and protests in cities across the U.S. But, as a public health researcher who studies the effects of racism on the health of black men, I have found that the life-and-death effects of racism in the U.S. go far beyond police shootings. I also have found that, while racism harms many groups of people, black men are paying the highest cost. As a result of racism, and associated poverty and injustice, life expectancy at birth of black men is 71.9 years, fa...