Awash in protest, America has become a spectacle. Once presented to the world as the land of the free, its traumatised and grieving citizens mourn the brutal death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer.
This is not new terrain. Instead, it is an addition to a long list of names that includes Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin and many more, revealing the lie of liberty once again. We view a white supremacist system organised on anti-blackness, doing what it is designed to do.
It is hard to find any sleep. Like many other black and brown people watching from overseas, our nights are spent in vigil seeking to make sense of the sights we’re seeing. A US senator calls for the army to “restore order”. President Trump explains to governors that “you have to dominate. If you don’t dominate you’re wasting time”, taunting on Twitter “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. And when the American police, the cause of this grief, devolves its brutality to the people it swore to serve and protect, with rubber bullets and tear gas — it all hits too close to home.
