Hello, Friends. How are you? I had the hardest time concentrating on work this week. Same for the house renovation. I was completely distracted by current events. I find news weeks like this to be all consuming — I tend to keep myself glued to Twitter, clicking every link, reading every essay, trying to formulate thoughts and figure out what sort of positive actions I can take.
We’ve had long discussions with the kids about Amy Cooper and George Floyd. We asked them not to watch the George Floyd video (I didn’t watch it either — no one needs to watch someone be murdered on camera), and we all watched the Amy Cooper video together several times.
We discussed how she intentionally manipulates her voice, and changes it to sound panic-ed, even though she’s obviously safe. And how she threatens to call the cops and specify he’s an African American, and claim that he’s threatening her life — clearly understanding that police reacting with violence to black people is very common. You can see her making the mental calculations and it feels like pure evil.
Now we’re watching news about the protests, sharing thoughts on Twitter and in Instagram Stories, and I’m feeling even more worried about my country than I did on Monday. (Memorial Day feels like a month ago already.)
I mean how do I share links this week? There are hundreds and hundreds I should share with you. Here are a few things, and feel free to check out my retweets for many more links:
–There was another way. So many of these deaths were preventable.
-At least seven people were shot as protesters in Louisville demonstrated against the killing of Breonna Taylor, a black woman fatally shot by police in her home in March.
-A YouTuber with hundreds of thousands of followers who shared her family’s experience of adopting a toddler from China announced she had “rehomed” the child after unspecified behavioral issues. (I’ve never heard the term rehomed used for anything but dogs.)
-CEO pay just grew to $ 12.3M — that’s 169 times more than the median worker.
-A Utah company called Zagg made $ 6M in profit last year and put it in the Cayman Islands. It paid $ 0 in U.S. taxes and actually got a $ 3.3M refund. It just got a $ 9.4M taxpayer bailout. Other countries have banned this but it’s perfectly legal in the U.S..
-Minneapolis police officer at the center of George Floyd’s death had been with the department since 2001. During his career, he was the subject of a dozen police conduct complaints. Records show he was never disciplined.
Here are some tweets I saved for you. (There are so many more! More of what I’ve retweeted lately.):
-Why would we ever expect these protests to be peaceful?
-What is calling for your empathy today?
-When do you find yourself using the word “riot”?
-A thread of recommended books for this moment in time.
-When do we justify property damage?
-Are the good cops speaking up?
-What do you make of this video?
-As long as we’re talking about police headquarters, let’s quickly remind ourselves about the horrific backlog of untested rape kits in our country.
–What kind of protests are acceptable?
-Tropical print shirts have become a thing in right wing protests. Here’s a fascinating thread on how this came to be. I think it does a really good job of showing the steps of how something like this happens.
-Again, Target will be fine.
-The officers responsible need to be arrested and charged with murder.
–Breathing as a right on many different levels.
-Imagine a world without police or prisons.
-A thread highlighting excuses white people use for rioting.
-If and when we ever get actual numbers, we will realize we passed 100,000 deaths weeks ago.
-In the middle of all the gut-wrenching news, Twitter still manages to make me laugh.
I hope we all have a weekend full of reading and listening and learning and empathizing. I’ll meet you back here on Monday. I miss you already.
kisses,
Gabrielle
