6.13.20 - Floyd's Rebellion

If any hope for our country exists, the last three weeks will go down as a pivotal period in our history. The murder of George Floyd, a slow-mo state execution on a public street, drove into public view a seething anger over the treatment of black people in this country, specifically by the police but more generally by the American project. Protests have erupted all around the country, fueled by a confluence of pent-up quarantine energy and even more pent-up outrage. It became such a scene that other countries joined in, similarly frustrated at COVID and ready to tell the authorities that generally completely failed, to fuck off.

But riots happen all the time in, you know, France. Here in the US, these protests feel like something real. They have focus, and with focus, they have weight. The grievance has never drifted from the murder of George Floyd and the state of affairs that incident emblematized. As Dave Chappelle said, it is incomprehensible how those cops could stand around, hands in pockets, not feeling like their complicity was about to rain the wrath of God upon them. But that's the problem: of course they felt this was business as usual.

These marches have felt unlike any I've participated in before. Never have I felt more American, more buoyed by the density of a historical moment. This protest comes at a really important time in this country's story. We are at a fragile moment for the American project. Never before have we confronted the white supremacy at the center of American life so directly. The Civil War was about slavery and the existence itself of the United States, but this moment is aimed squarely at a psychological change that needs to come about in order for this "American experiment" to persist. 

The Floyd protests haven't been rebellion, necessarily. It almost feels like a national alignment. I hope they work.