George Floyd

Saturday, 30th May, 2020

Has it ever been possible to move from visions and dreams to reality? From the glorious visions of Isaiah where the lion will lie down with the lamb and the child play over the hole of the asp and there would be no more hurt to Martin Luther King's vision of harmony and peace with all people, we have dreamed. There have been and continue to be great visionaries and dreamers, peoples sacrificing themselves for something beyond themselves. The Buddha saw the suffering of peoples and sought enlightenment for all; Christ brought the message of hope, love and peace; even in my era the hippies had a dream of a mundane nirvana.

Alongside these dreamers and people of hope we have to set the images of hate, violence, abuse and a whole gamut of destructive selfish actions and peoples out for themselves alone.

I recall various photographic images which spoke of a hell beyond the one instant. The photograph of the Vietnamese child screaming and running covered in napalm. The photograph of a young man throwing a Molotov cocktail during the Northern Ireland troubles. The execution of a Chinese soldier by an officer with the pistol in his hand which had just been fired and the bullet entering the skull of the executed. The photograph of the Boeing jet flying in to the Twins Towers and the burst of debris and flame. Many such capture a global moment. The same can be said for the picture of the White police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd: the killing moment of an unarmed African American in Minneapolis as the latter uttered 'I can't breathe'.

Photographs and videos of particular incidents and moments. As riots erupted in Minneapolis so a local resident noted : "not just a singular moment. This is a cataclysm". 

Research leads to the uncovering of many similar racist incidents from the shooting of Trayvan Martin in 2012 ( whence the movement 'Black lives matter' emerged) to the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and many others.

These photographs capture an incident, may be an individual but they represent far more. They represent 'cancers' in our societies, they represent unjust wars and unjust situations and histories, the represent massive injustices and inequalities of rights, powers, environments and lifestyles. They are an indictment of each of us. They are the bulwarks against the realisation of dreams.

#blacklivesmatter #alllivesmatter #georgefloyyd #icantbreathe