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African-American George Floyd's death has led to marches, demonstrations, acts of violence, and looting across the USA and in other parts of the world. Emotions are running high. We will not attempt to accuse or defend anyone here. Just attempt to lay out the information we have and offer it up for the community to discuss. Many comments about this incident have been posted to unrelated stories on this site. This is, therefore, an attempt to provide one place on SoylentNews where people are encouraged to discuss it. So as to not derail other stories on the site, I kindly ask you focus those comments here.
Wikipedia has a page about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd (permanent link to the page as it appeared at the time of writing):
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was killed in the Powderhorn community of Minneapolis, Minnesota. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white American Minneapolis police officer, kept his knee on the right side of Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds; according to the criminal complaint against Chauvin, 2 minutes and 53 seconds of that time occurred after Floyd became unresponsive.[3][4][5][6][7] Officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane participated in Floyd's arrest, with Kueng holding Floyd's back, Lane holding his legs, and Thao looking on and preventing intervention by an onlooker as he stood nearby.[8]:6:24[9][10]
The arrest was made after Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill at a market.[11] Police said Floyd physically resisted arrest.[12][13] Some media organizations commented that a security camera from a nearby business did not show Floyd resisting.[14][15] The criminal complaint filed later said that based on body camera footage, Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe while standing outside the police car, resisted getting in the car and intentionally fell down.[16][17][18][19] Several bystanders recorded the event on their smartphones, with one video showing Floyd repeating "Please", "I can't breathe", "Mama", and "Don't kill me" being widely circulated on social media platforms and broadcast by the media.[20] While knee-to-neck restraints are allowed in Minnesota under certain circumstances, Chauvin's usage of the technique has been widely criticized by law enforcement experts as excessive.[21][22][23] All four officers were fired the day after the incident.[24]
[...] Charges: Third-degree murder (Chauvin) Second-degree manslaughter (Chauvin)
This has been extensively covered by the media. Some outlets attempt to put their own interpretations on their coverage with their selection of video footage and with their commentary. It is difficult to find a simple video of the incident. Here is one that has coverage from the time of initial encounter of the police the officers with George Floyd up through his being taken away by ambulance. The video is a composite of shots from a restaurant's surveillance camera (Dragon Wok), Officer body cam, and bystander cell phones. YouTube footage: Full George Floyd Available Footage (21:12). If anyone has more complete footage of the arrest, please mention it clearly (with a link) in the comments.
Lastly, this is a hard time for everybody. Pandemic. Lock-down. Unemployment. Fears. Please be mindful of others' circumstances when commenting. We are a community sprung from a time of challenge. Let us continue to be here for one-another during this difficult time. SoylentNews is People.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:05PM (27 children)
I agree. This is a bad idea.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:27PM (3 children)
We're already discussing this extensively.
Three of the four most recent journal entries on the front page are about this:
https://soylentnews.org/~c0lo/journal/ [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/~RandomFactor/journal/ [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/~exaeta/journal/ [soylentnews.org]
And those journal entries have a combined total of 223 comments.
It seems like Soylentils want to discuss this. As that's the case, why are you against such discussion?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by janrinok on Wednesday June 03 2020, @08:00AM (2 children)
Because this site was created to discuss STEM topics predominantly. We recognise that some might want to discuss other things and, as you have already pointed out, it is already being discussed in 3 different journals. What does a 4th discussion add to the matter? Do we have to cover every black murder in the USA now? How about white murders? Or perhaps we should report every car/auto accident because there are often human casualties in those events too? The subject is being covered by every MSM outline in the USA and Europe, there are plenty of sources to get your information available to you. I don't think we should be one of them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @09:33AM (1 child)
Fair enough.
That said, I agree with martyb's reasoning [soylentnews.org].
Since folks were not only discussing this in journals, but also posting off-topic comments in other stories as well, doesn't it make sense to have a place to put those comments that's not stepping on other discussions?
What's more, SN does cover things that newsworthy that aren't STEM related. The recent "COVID Roundup" stories or the flurry of stories about Notre Dame after the fire.
Besides, this has become much, much bigger than a dead black man in Minneapolis. Hundreds of thousands of people on at least three continents (in at least 120 locations in the US alone) are out in the streets demonstrating. The President of the United States ordered peacefully protesting Americans to be tear-gassed and bludgeoned. That same President has threatened to use the US military on Americans. There have been numerous incidents of police brutality and whole neighborhoods have been looted and burned.
I'd say that was pretty newsworthy and certainly worth it's own front page article all by itself. Given that folks were posting about it in unrelated stories, it seems a no-brainer to me. And since this topic currently has 205 (206 once I post this) comments, I'm glad all those comments weren't in other, unrelated stories.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:37PM
So why didn't they put those comments into the journals that were discussing that event? And creating another story does not remove those comments from all the other stories where they remain off-topic, thus spoiling any chance of discussing the subject topic intelligently.
So this isn't about a 'dead black man' - your comment suggests that it is about politics and the person you currently have as your leader. This is just another opportunity for the Ds and Rs to throw names at each other. Take your political name-calling somewhere else please. I don't particularly care which side you are on, you as a nation put him in the Whitehouse, you sort it out. How many times have black people been killed and their death has sparked riots and protests? And then tell us all why nothing has ever changed.
That is because the community we once had and the one we have now are very different. Nowadays there are a fair number of ACs who just want to discuss their own brand of politics, and they come here because they can do so anonymously and without being censored. That is not to say that description fits all ACs but certainly a good proportion of them. But how many of them are prepared to step up and help run this site?
One of the topics that we do discuss is "Careers and Education". There can be now doubt that Covid-19 has affected both careers and education for millions of people around the world. The same cannot be said, in my opinion, for another attack by the police on a black person in the USA. As serious as that attack is, and despite how abhorrent the action is to most people, it does not meet any of our usual STEM topics. Tell me again in a few months time when the protests have ended and the name of George Floyd doesn't feature in any of the newspapers. When things change then that will be a story worth publishing by this site.
Go back and count them. There were other stories published by our community regarding the bees in Notre Dame, or actions by the alt-right who were blaming Muslims for the fire. They were stories about bees and the alt-right.
Just my $0.02 worth.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:30PM (5 children)
I'd rather have a place for it to go, then spill all over into random articles. But then again, we've seen how well that thought went with other political topics.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:49PM (4 children)
Not sure if it's really their intent, but I think it's just going to stir things up, maybe a little like inciting a riot. They'll certainly get lots of comments in this discussion.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:56PM (2 children)
It's still about 42 comments away from the Hall of Fame [soylentnews.org]. 41 now...
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @09:56PM (1 child)
42, the answer to life, ... never mind. So here's the burning question: is it about quantity, or quality? I'd like to see stats on total mod points, and average score per comment, etc.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday June 04 2020, @11:11AM
Would be nice to have both. On a submission like this, there's bound to be a mixture. The in depth analysis is good. The one liners that just refute someone's point with the same unsubstantiated counterpoint over and over again, we could probably do without. Then you have people like me stuffing it with these offtopic metaposts, partly so I can say look, it's just matched the bottom of the Most Active Stories on the Hall of Fame!
Now you're talkin'! I wouldn't mind whiling away a quiet afternoon running queries and plotting graphs on that database. That would actually be another way to rank the most and least popular discussions on the Hall of Fame, highest and lowest average score per comment. Although it might reflect more a change in audience and modding behavior over the life of SoylentNews, rather than a change in the quality of the articles or even the comments.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @03:08PM
You blathering on, attacking other people while *falsely* claiming that they're attacking you won't help the quality of comments, Sergeant Pinback.
It's something to consider, regardless of the topic.
Cheers, friend!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:33PM (12 children)
Nice try, martyb! This cannot but end in racist MAGA thugs crossing a street to tear gas priests to use their church for a photo op, or some thing like that.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:29PM (10 children)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:40PM (4 children)
Not just MAGA, MAGA Thugs! But, seriously, you were just asking for it. Now let me direct a horde of Anti Fascists in the general direction of SN. But, actually we do not need them, because Soylentils are creatures of extraordinary peace and justice, so the Trump supporting trolls will be dealt with appropriately. Even khallow has been making sense lately!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @12:08AM (3 children)
So anti-fascists are anti-fascist because it's in the name, exactly like national socialists were socialists? The FBI are questioning people arrested in NYC about connections to Antifa, twitchy asshole time for these authoritarians pretending they're anarchists. [youtu.be]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @12:29AM (2 children)
But finding none. [thenation.com] Interesting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @02:37AM (1 child)
Watch and learn [instagram.com]
Review Debord, you are watching theater. Antifa is not a hierarchical organization, it's vertically integrated like ISIS so it takes longer to map but the cells are there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @01:27AM
With the crucial distinction: Antifa does not exist. It is like Q, to QAnon. Or the Deep State, Trump's attempt to be more like Nixon and his Deep Throat. Or, the pron movie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:06PM (4 children)
Well since that was the core message behind the POTUS's campaign I think it is fair.
How come I never see this tone trolling stuff against the conservative shitposters? Hmmmmmm, no sarcasm tags, suspeeshus.
(Score: 5, Touché) by SpockLogic on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:40PM
The rotten core is full of MAGAts
MAGA = Morons are Governing America
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Wednesday June 03 2020, @02:27PM (2 children)
You want sarcasm tags? We've got sarcasm tags! Near the bottom of the comment entry form (the one you used to enter the above comment) appears this text:
For example, if you enter this text in your comment:
It is rendered as:
Similarly, if you enter this text in your comment:
That is rendered as:
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @06:07PM (1 child)
I was commenting on the lack of sarcasm tags in your post. Didn't seem like you'd be genuinely thankful for MAGA to be mentioned, bit of an odd statement.
I'm sure some other users appreciated your educational post though.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday June 03 2020, @06:30PM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @01:15PM
MAGA = Making Anal Great Again. Significant that you bring this up.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by qzm on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:52AM (3 children)
Since when did this become a political discussions site? Shouldnt we be actively working to avoid this?
There are plenty of other forums more suited.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @06:15AM
Since martyb and the admins and devs decided to toss some cheese into the rat pen, that's when. Squeak squeak! :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday June 03 2020, @09:53AM
For me this is primarily an ethical issue. Politics just happens to be one of the main ways our civilizations influence and legislate on such issues. I'd much rather discuss such things with intelligent nerds with at least a passing understanding of the scientific method (even if they're refusing to apply it) than people on "forums more suited".
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @11:59PM
SoylentNews is People
Personally I'd prefer we didn't have politics although that's not realistic these days to the point where I'm following politics more than tech. You don't have to comment on political stories although this one and the resulting "protests" will be unavoidable for some time.