Today is Thursday, May 25, 2023. Today marks the third anniversary of the death of George Floyd at the heels of Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin who is now serving a sentence of 22 years and six months behind bars for the murder of the unarmed Black citizen. Floyd’s death sent shockwaves around the world after he was callously murdered by Chauvin in a horrifying incident that was captured on camera. The Minneapolis police officer used his knee to pin George’s neck to the ground for nine and a half minutes as the victim pleaded, “I can’t breathe” over and over. As a result of this fateful remembrance of such a horrific example of clear racism at the hands of the very people who are supposed to protect society, it behooves us to ascertain if there have been significant changes in the wake of Floyd’s untimely death. In an online article for The Hill, this review has been undertaken by Cheyanne M. Daniels in her article “Here’s what’s changed since George Floyd’s murder three years ago.”

It is indicated in the article that much has changed since Floyd’s killing, but citing startling statistics from the database Mapping Police Violence, there is a recognition that much hasn’t changed all the same. “Floyd’s death did lead to massive protests across the country and the world, and it awakened much of the country to how much change is necessary to take real strides toward racial equality and justice.”

Lawmakers who have championed for change note that despite all that attention, violence is still being carried out against Black people by police on a regular basis.

Here’s a look at what has happened in the past three years since the death of Floyd.

One of the biggest shifts since the Floyd killing has come in efforts to hold police more accountable when individuals are killed in their custody or as a result of their actions. In the past, police have repeatedly been able to avoid jail time for the murders or beatings of Black Americans, from Rodney King to the more recent examples of Trayvon Martin, Stephen Clark, Freddie Gray, Philando Castille, and Alton Sterling. There are so many others in which police officers involved in these questionable killings were able to walk and escape accountability. In Floyd’s case, the police officers involved were not only charged with the Black man’s murder, they were also convicted.

In other cases like the killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Minneapolis, Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Gannon and officer Kim Potter resigned for their involvement in Wright’s death. Potter was convicted of manslaughter.

In Memphis, the five officers involved in the beating of Tyre Nichols have been fired and charged in his death.

In terms of defunding and reforming police departments, more than 30 states have passed 140 oversight and reform laws on local police since that fateful day three years ago, according to The New York Times.

Some of these laws restricted tactics such as no-knock warrants, which led to the dearth of Breonna Taylor in Louisville – another touchstone event from 2020. Others ban the use of neck restraints – like what Chauvin used against Floyd – and mandated the use of body cameras.

Calls to “defund the police” also echoed around the country in the summer of 2020. In many cases, those calls were to redirect funds for police to other services. Some cities have taken steps to do this.

The slogan of “defund the police” has regrettably led to backlash for some Democratic politicians as crime rose after the pandemic. However, many polls show a majority of Americans support reforming policies to make police more accountable.

More than 80 percent of Americans want police officers to face legal action for abuse of power or unnecessary harm, while 78 percent support community-based alternatives to police, such as violence intervention programs, according to a 2022 Gallup poll.

In pursuit to that end, Minneapolis voted to shift nearly $8 million from police funding to services like violence prevention and mental health crisis response teams.

Another city, Boston, reallocated $12 million of its police overtime budget in June 2020 to instead invest in community programs such as trauma and counseling services.

And in 2021, Los Angeles approved Measure J, which allocates 10 percent of the county’s revenue to community investment and alternatives to incarceration.

Federal efforts on police reform have stalled, however.

In 2021, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was approved by a Democratic-controlled House, but the legislation went nowhere in the Senate and appears to be on hold with a GOP (“Guns Over People”) majority House.

The key area of disagreement is over ending qualified immunity, a set of rules that protects government officials – including police officers – from individual liability for violating personal and constitutional rights.

As for executive actions that are the purview of the President, Biden did sign an executive order for federal law enforcement agencies that bans the use of chokeholds, restricts no-knock warrants, and requires antibias training and body-worn cameras. Yet that order only goes so far because it does not apply to state and local police.

In marking the anniversary of Floyd’s death, President Biden said, “I urge Congress to enact meaningful police reform and send it to my desk. I will sign it. I will continue to do everything in my power to fight for police accountability in Congress, and I remain willing to work with Republicans and Democrats alike on genuine solutions.”

So this review lets you know what has changed or not changed since the killing of George Floyd three years ago in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic here.

To a lighter note here, I just saw the video of the entire House of Representatives hooting and hollering at the profoundly sick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as she demanded decorum in the chamber. She received no respect from the entire body. The response from the entire body toward her ludicrous cries for “decorum” just illustrated how every Democrat in the chamber thinks of her as a total joke. Greene earned the ridicule of the entire House since she herself cannot abide by rules of decorum when she loudly and repeatedly heckles President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address in February and speaks out of turn at every chance she gets. So why should she receive any measure of respect after that?

Yesterday I and many other people missed the fascistic governor of Florida’s disastrous launch of his presidential bid for 2024 on Elon Musk’s far-right platform Twitter. I hope this catastrophic announcement is just a harbinger of the governor’s entire presidential campaign and his chances for winning in 2024.

Also I missed yesterday’s blog since Elliot and I were at the James Earl Jones Theatre watching two pros portray a bohemian couple of the 60s living in Greenwich Village in Lorraine Hansberry’s 1964 play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. The two actors were Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan as Sidney and Iris Brustein. Though the play is rather long (close to three hours), I enjoyed the production immensely. The themes were eerily relevant today – political corruption, interracial love, prostitution, and homosexuality – as the two principals interacted with a cast of characters who come in and out of their cluttered Greenwich Village apartment. Isaac shines as the overly idealistic, progressive Sidney whose many notions of success don’t square with reality, as in his failed folk-music nightclub named after On Walden Pond. At the beginning of the play, we learn that Sidney has bought a local paper which he vows to keep pure from politics before going whole hog on a candidate promising reform.

Even though the play ended around 4, we still came home early enough for me to write my blog. However, I got caught up in watching two episodes of a new HBO Max series called Love and Death starring Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons. This series is based on a true-crime story out of Wylie, Texas, involving two churchgoing couples, the Gores and the Montgomerys, in which Candy Montgomery, here portrayed by Olsen, begins an affair with Allan Gore (Jesse Plemons). Eventually the wife of Allan, Betty Gore, is found hacked to death in her house in 1980, and her friend, Candy, is charged with her death. The series seems to rest primarily on Olsen’s cold and calculating performance as a Texas housewife who apparently has it all, a husband and three children, and is a member of good standing at her church. The man she decides to have the affair with, Allan, is a bit of a dullard and Plemons plays it to the hilt as the boring but dependable husband to Betty who is a bit of a neurotic when we first meet her. She is played by Lily Rabe. For some reason, we watched two episodes yesterday, then I watched one episode of The House of Hammer which is a salacious series depicting the downfall of actor Armie Hammer. The series also examines the actor’s pedigree, from his great-grandfather Armand Hammer, all the way up the family tree in which the rich and powerful family’s secrets come to light. I’m not sure if I will continue to watch the series since the revelations about the actor are so voyeuristic that it’s cringeworthy. Do I need to know what sexual secrets other Hammers hid for years? I don’t think so.

Have a good Friday.

By the way, today is the Jewish holiday of Shavuot that marks the time when Jews received the Torah from God on Mount Sinai. Thus the holiday begins tonight and lasts until the evening of Saturday, May 27. It is typical to eat some form of dairy on this holiday like stuffed blintzes and cheesecake. The main way of marking the holiday is the reading of the Ten Commandments from a Torah scroll.

So for those who celebrate this holiday, I wish you chag sameach.

Stay safe and be well.