George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis on the night of May 25, 2020. His death was ruled a homicide by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner. Floyd was in police custody at the time of his death. Videos and this photo show a police officer kneeling on Floyd's neck at about the time of his death. Four officers have been charged in the death. The Signpost is sorry that we can't publish the "fair use image" linked above because it is not freely licensed for publication in The Signpost. But the protests and related events following Floyd's death were photographed and the photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons many thousands of times. We present a sample of those photos.
People often say that "photographs don't lie," but every photograph has a point-of-view. Every photographer has a point-of-view, as much as they might try to hide it. Every editor who needs to select photos for The Signpost has a point-of-view. As much as we try to be neutral in this photo essay, the best we can do is to try to present many different points-of-view. There are no neutral positions in many of the issues raised by the death of George Floyd.
Thousands of protests against police violence were held throughout the world. Most were peaceful, some were not. The National Guard was deployed in some US states and in Washington, D.C. We can only hope that people do not blame all police, all protesters, or all National Guardsmen for the violence and destruction that took place.
The problem of police violence, especially the problem of police violence against Black people, will have to be dealt with by politicians by political means. In a democracy "politics" should not be a dirty word.
Why does any of this matter? Black lives matter. Of course all lives matter, but Black people are those being killed on a regular basis by police in America. The living matter too. Our lives going forward will all be better if all the people involved in these protests can respect all the other people involved.
Discuss this story
deisenbe (talk) 20:01, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @DiplomatTesterMan: I'm listening to the song and I'm skeptical of a connection. The names are just the commonly-spread well-known instances of recent killings of African Americans, and "say their names" or "say his/her name" is just one of the many things chanted in the protests, or said to the police officers during them. I think any correlation with the song is a coincidence? ɱ (talk) 18:33, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Ɱ Yes, it may just be a coincidence. DTM (talk) 02:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I read "being killed on a regular basis by police in America". This is a very wrong. The given link is Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States, not in America. There are many countries in America, not only the United States. Smallbones must change that. Cantons-de-l'Est (talk) 21:20, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Great photographs! Thanks for compiling this gallery of high quality pictures (+ video) on this important event.--Discott (talk) 15:00, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]