In watching the protesters march and chant, it could appear that the basis of their anger is clear: A Police Officer appeared to have murdered George Floyd in cold blood (he is charged but has yet to be convicted). Mr. Floyd was an African American man who begged for his life. The situation is angering and those who marched in protest of his death exhibited apparently righteous anger. Now, while sometimes their chants and signs were hateful towards police officers and I DO NOT condone fighting hatred with hatred, their anger is justified.
To me, though, there’s more to the story than George Floyd’s horrible death. Yes, we should hold police officers to a higher standard, but we should also hold elected officials and the people they place in senior level positions to the same high standards. We can’t denounce police when the people who design and implement policies hide in shadows and work surreptitiously for their own ends. Many times (and I’ve seen this many times), people holding senior level position break from the their elected superiors and act selfishly in and for their own interests. Elected officials can’t be experts in all facets of government and therefore must trust their senior staff to carry out the platforms upon which we elected them. However, when senior staff act outside of the elected official’s vision and then present realities that, on the surface, appear to align with the established vision yet in practice, are a far cry from what should be happening, people wise up to the lies and become angry. That anger is being vented across the country.
The police officers who killed Mr. Floyd are instruments of policy, the same as every other government worker. The question that we as voters have to ask ourselves is: Who are the people that we will passively elect when we cast our vote? Those are the people responsible for daily worker behaviors and if we can’t trust them, then we shouldn’t vote for the person whose coattails they will ride. Yes, as citizens, we are angry at the police, but their leaders should have created an environment that would never tolerate that type of behavior. Because they didn’t, George Floyd is dead.
Mr. Floyd has passed to the next life and died violently and mercilessly. I’m angry, but I will place that anger into learning about the people surrounding the candidates for whom I may vote. Those people are the ones with which we should be concerned because when their egos start writing checks, we will be the ones to cash them. I pray for Mr. Floyd and his family, but next time I vote, I will carry his death as my lens. We must familiarize ourselves with the candidate’s circles because they are the ones who will decide our communities’ fate. We should hold elected officials’ senior staffs just as accountable as the elected officials.
