Floyd’s Brother Demands End To Violence: “If His Own Family And Blood Is Not Doing It, Then Why Are You?”
Tue 6:38 am +01:00, 2 Jun 2020
No one has more right to outrage and anger than the Floyd family, Terrence Floyd told ABC News, but they want people to stop destroying communities in George Floyd’s name. “They’re using this as an excuse to be stupid,” Floyd said about his brother’s death at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers. The family wants an end to all of the rioting not just in the Twin Cities but around the country, which they see as an affront to the way George Floyd lived his life. “Do something positive,” he urged, “stop making excuses” (via Townhall):
Rep. Val Demings to MN cops: “What the hell are you doing?”
“[S]ometimes I get angry, I want to bust some heads, too,” Terrence Floyd told ABC News. “I wanna just go crazy. But I’m here. My brother wasn’t about that. My brother was about peace. You’ll hear a lot of people say he was a gentle giant.” …
“Don’t tear up your town, all of this is not necessary because if his own family and blood is not doing it, then why are you?” said Terrence Floyd. “If his own family and blood are trying to deal with it and be positive about it, and go another route to seek justice, then why are you out here tearing up your community? Because when you’re finished and turn around and want to go buy something, you done tore it up. So now you messed up your own living arrangements. So just relax. Justice will be served.”
The Floyd family and George’s girlfriend have made a valiant effort to advocate for peace in the eruption of anger following his death. Unfortunately, most of the street action seen in the Twin Cities and elsewhere don’t have much to do with George Floyd. The legitimate protests over his death have been used for cover by violent agitators with an entirely different agenda, and they’re not likely to be swayed by Terrence Floyd’s sensible argument for dialing down the tensions.
The younger Floyd also told ABC that he plans to come to Minneapolis soon, along with civil-rights activists from New York City. Floyd appeared on Good Morning America to discuss the trip with Rev. Kevin McCall, who wore a mask with George Floyd’s picture and the words “We Can’t Breathe” on it:
“I just want to feel my brother’s spirit … to connect with him again.” Terrence Floyd reacts to the protests that have erupted across the country after his brother’s death as he plans to make a visit to the site where his brother died in Minneapolis. https://gma.abc/2TUnc5y
Terrence Floyd said on “GMA” that he is traveling from his home in New York City on Tuesday to visit the site in Minneapolis where his brother drew his last breath.
“I just want to feel my brother’s spirit,” he said. “Just connect with him again.”
The Rev. Kevin McCall and other civil rights activists from the New York City area will be joining Terrence Floyd on that trip to “call for peace and unity.”
“We can be able to call for justice, but we need peace as well,” McCall said. “Nobody is more angry than the family.”
Hopefully Floyd’s message of peace and positive action gets taken to heart by those committing violence. Since the violence doesn’t have much to do with Floyd’s death except as an exploitation of it, the need for National Guard control will likely — and sadly — continue. Kudos to Terrence Floyd and his family for doing all they can regardless of whether it works or not, though.
Israeli forces training US police on large scale: Amnesty
US law enforcement officers move toward demonstrators during a gathering to protest the recent death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020 in Bellevue, Washington.
Amnesty International has revealed how police forces from a surprisingly wide expanse of the United States have been receiving training from Israeli forces and services, warning that the violence being exercised by the American law enforcement has come to match Israeli brutality.
The UK-based rights group said the American police members have been either traveling to the occupied territories to receive training or have been trained inside the United States by Israeli forces
It said Israeli police, military, and intelligence services have been providing training to American forces on such issues as “crowd control, use of force, and surveillance.”
It identified the recipients as “Baltimore law enforcement officials, along with hundreds of others from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state as well as the DC Capitol police.”
Besides those traveling to the occupied territories, “thousands of others have received training from Israeli officials here in the US,” the Amnesty noted.
The training is either taxpayer funded or privately funded as in the case of the money that has been offered for the process since 2002 by the international far-right Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange that arranges for visits to the occupied territories by Americans, and Washington, D.C-based think tank, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs of America, the rights body reported.
The training process, it regretted, puts members of the US police “in the hands of [the Israeli] military, security, and police systems that have racked up documented human rights violations for years.”
The Amnesty cautioned that the US police’s abuses had now come to “parallel violations by Israeli military, security and police officials.”
It cited some of Israeli forces’ atrocities as extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, the use of ill-treatment and torture even against children, suppression of freedom of expression and association, and excessive use of force against peaceful protesters.
The Amnesty finally advised that the US police be instead trained on de-escalation techniques, how to handle mentally challenged or ill citizens, and how to appropriately respond to those using non-violent protest.
“The people of Baltimore deserve better. The American public deserves better,” the body said.
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