Finally Friday

OH LOOK, MORE FLOWERS: Well, I guess we have the pandemic to 'thank' that this space that used to track all of our out and about activities has now basically become a gardening blog. 

I guess there are worse things.

Check out the rose atop the post. We spied it in a neighbor's yard during our noontime loop of the 'hood. Annabelle noticed it looked like it had two centers. 

And check out these purple ceanothus in another neighbor's front yard. Also known as California lilacs, the bees seemed to love them.  

SAY HIS NAME: George Floyd. 

By now, you almost certainly have heard of him. 

George Floyd.

The man who was pinned down and had his life choked out of him, a knee on his neck.

George Floyd.

The man who cried out for his deceased mother as he repeatedly told the man, a police officer, who was killing him, "I can't breathe." 

George Floyd.

The man whose slow, tortuous death was filmed while onlookers implored the officers to help, rather than harm the victim.

For over a week now, we have been watching wall to wall news coverage of Floyd's killing and the resultant protests. Last Saturday, as we drove through Seattle, the acrid smell of tear gas made our eyes water and our throats burn. The tear gas was used against people peacefully protesting Floyd's killing. 

America - we have a lot to learn.

Given that, on Thursday afternoon, I signed CJ and Annabelle up for a session hosted by Seattle University's School of Law. Professor Bryan Adamson moderated an online teach-in with criminal law experts Professor Deborah Ahrens (Seattle University School of Law) and Professor Ayesha Bell Hardaway (Case Western Reserve University) about the factual and legal aspects of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, and the resulting demonstrations.

Here's how CJ describes the online event.

Thursday’s livestream from Seattle U about how the law applies to George Floyd’s killing was somewhat informative, but in my opinion seemed rather lackluster in engaging content. While the professors certainly had some interesting things to say about the original event, it felt to me like most of the 1 hour 45 minutes we spent there was just them feeding definitions of the different types of murder charges to us. I remember thinking to myself as the program ended “I could have looked this up on Wikipedia in 5 minutes.” While I appreciate the fact that these educators are dedicated to spreading the word on what they can expect to see in the following weeks on the legal side of things, I don’t think it constituted almost 2 hours of talking (half of which was spent over the scheduled time.) 

Since late May, effectively every major city in the U.S. has been in turmoil. Protests appeared in all fifty states as a response to the killing of George Floyd, a defenseless black man from Minneapolis, Minnesota. On May 25, 2020, Floyd was killed by Derek Michael Chauvin, a police officer from the Minneapolis Police Department. Chauvin had a history of violent behavior while on the police force, and forcibly kneeled on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, asphyxiating Floyd to death in the process. Eventually, all four officers involved in Floyd's death were charged with felonies, but not before the protests (and later riots) broke out.

Annabelle had this summary ... 

Thursday afternoon, Seattle University (Seattle U)'s School of Law hosted a livestream on YouTube. The livestream lasted an hour and a half, and featured Seattle U School of Law faculty and lawyers in a Zoom conference call. Unsurprisingly, the topic of the discussion was the legal procedures surrounding the killing of George Floyd. Near the start of the livestream, a silence of eight minutes and forty-six seconds (the amount of time that Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck) was observed. Following this silence, the most significant section of the livestream was a lawyer listing and detailing the charges brought against Chauvin and the three other officers. The single most significant of these charges was most likely Chauvin's second-degree murder charge. It's worth noting that Minnesota is unusual in its degree system for murders. What would be called a second-degree murder in several other states is considered a third-degree murder in Minnesota.

This afternoon, on our way home from the store, we were caught up in a small, but impactful Black Lives Matter demonstration. It was at a random intersection in West Seattle, on Roxbury. There were groups of 4-8 people at each of the corners of the intersection. They had homemade signs, Sharpie scrawled on cardboard, all the same message, Black Lives Matter. I only saw one person of color among the sign holders. The rest appeared white, and they were animated as all get out - as were the people in cars at the intersection. Dozens of cars were honking in support, and car passengers rolled their windows down and raised their fists in solidarity. It restored my faith in humanity.