Day Tripping: May 25
A Day for Remembrance
Eradicate The Hate
An individual walks into a local convenience store to buy cigarettes. The store clerk discovers the bill being used to make the purchase is counterfeit. The individual leaves the store but remains on the premises, seemingly unaware of the seriousness of the crime.
Police arrive on the scene with backup and proceed to arrest the alleged counterfeiter. The accused resists arrest, but with the force from four law officers, the man is handcuffed and put on the ground. Several minutes later, the alleged counterfeiter is dead. Several questions are brought to mind with this tragic, but true incident.
- Is counterfeiting a crime? Certainly.
- Is a man’s death a fitting punishment, regardless of his intent? Certainly not.
- Would it have mattered if the alleged criminal were white? That is a question we all, unfortunately, know the answer to.
George Floyd died one year ago today, for nothing other than being a black man with a phony $20 bill. He was a large man who had lost his job due to the pandemic. He may have resisted arrest, but he was no match for four large Minneapolis policemen.
And he was black.
4. Why should this matter?
For nearly nine minutes, George Floyd pleaded for his life. “I can’t breath” has become a mantra for a new age of civil unrest, and anyone of colour relates closely to those haunting words that went unheard by the one person who could have helped him.
5. Was George Floyd a saint?
Most likely not. only those who knew him could tell you the kind of person he was. Like any other human, he had loved ones and he had detractors. Whether he was a good and decent man is quite beside the point. George was an individual with the rightful expectation to be treated fairly.
6. Have we learned from this tragedy?
Hard to say. The ones who really need to learn from this probably have not. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, more people of colour have been mistreated or killed.
Strangely, eighty-five years previous, on the same day of George Floyd’s death, another black man captured the consciousness of the world. At a university track meet, this man broke three world records and tied one other in 1935. The following year, Jesse Owens went to Berlin and under the watchful eyes of Hitler, Jesse captured four track and field Gold Medals.
Jesse didn’t go to Germany to prove that a black man was the equal of any other. He went there to display his better self, not unlike the rest of the world’s athletes at those Olympic Games.
George Floyd never got the chance to display his better self because, he could not breathe. If positive change comes from his tragic circumstances then hopefully, he will not have died in vain. But, that will only occur when everyone displays their better self.
Sixty years ago on this very same day, a President stood in front of his nation and the world to announce a goal of putting humans on the surface of the moon before the end of that decade. In his speech, John F. Kennedy appealed to the better selves of his countrymen.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,”
Of all days in history, this is the one to remind us that the hard days are far more worth achieving, for George Floyd’s sake, for Jesse Owens, and for ourselves.
Musical Milestones
Tubular Bells, the groundbreaking album by Mike Oldfield was released in 1973 in the UK, making Virgin Records a viable entity in recording and was featured as the theme music for The Exorcist.
Narratives
Before it was ever known as ‘Episode IV’, George Lucas’ pioneering production, Star Wars was released in 1977.
Notable Births
1927 — Spy novelist who wrote The Bourne Identity and many more thrillers, Robert Ludlum
1944 — Master puppeteer and voice of several muppet characters, Frank Oz
1963 — Creator of Wayne’s World and Austin Powers, Mike Myers
1970 — Star of some of the top award-winning films of the past two decades, Octavia Spencer
K. Barrett Katie Wallace Maria Rattray Maryam Merchant Dr Mehmet Yildiz Tree Langdon Myriam Ben Salem Phil Truman Chelsea Mandler MAT Terry Mansfield Hollie Petit, PhD. Terry Trueman Dr Preeti Singh John Gruber Bill Abbate James G Brennan ScienceDuuude Marcus Liam Ireland Claire Kelly Noorain Hassan, BMS Amy Pierovich David Acaster Nora Thewriteyard David Perlmutter Joe Luca
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