George Floyd’s death propelled the names of others who died in police custody to the most prominent years after their deaths. For some grieving parents, fighting for justice for a long time may be welcome, but it is painful.
Floyd’s face looks through Minneapolis Square, which is a monument to his death.
In front of her, Angelique Negroni-Kearse stops to take a photo. He traveled from New York, one of dozens of other people who converge in the upper Midwest city to mourn those who died in police custody, and seek justice.
Floyd’s face examines the flowers and tributes underneath. Behind him, a list of names is the war cry heard in protests, T-shirts and chronology around the world: give our names.
Names they’ve known for reasons why no one would need to make celebrities they enjoy. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Breonna Taylor.
Names most of us know little about. Sandra Bland. Alton Sterling. Philando Castilla. Names many of us have seen dead.
Angelique’s husband’s call is one of them.
Andrew Kearse died in 2017. Fifteen days after he was released from prison, he was arrested for a traffic violation in Schenectady, New York. He ran. A cop chased him and handcuffed him. Kearse complained of pain in his leg while in the back of a police car.
“Excuse me sir, excuse me sir,” Kearse says, panting, in a video broadcast by police and uploaded to YouTube through his widow.
“I can’t breathe. Sir, sir, I can’t breathe. Please.”
In 17 minutes, he asked for help dozens of times. An ambulance called alone after the car arrived at the station and some time after Kearse lost consciousness. He had a fit at the center and died.
As The Call and Symbol of Floyd traveled the world, traversing nations and borders through the inexorable impulse of action and injustice, other calls, others dead, traveled in their path.
“People want to know what happened to Andrew,” Angelique told the BBC on the phone from a hotel room in Minneapolis.
“That’s why I drove so hard for him, that everyone might be his voice.
“We’re going to have paint and we’re going to paint your call on the floor. Maybe it’s not the mural of … George Floyd, with everyone.”
“But I probably wouldn’t let anyone Andrew.”
Emerald Garner wants to be forgotten.
“I don’t need this national attention. I don’t need other people to recognize me on the street,” he told the BBC.
‘I just need to stop by, enjoy my day and not let other people say, ‘You’re Eric Garner’s daughter, that’s how I felt with the video.’
“And it’s like I’m looking to enjoy Christmas. I’m looking to enjoy Easter. It’s my son’s birthday.”
He was 22 when his father died in 2014.
Accused of illegally promoting loose cigarettes, he arrested him and, like George Floyd, apprehended him. Like George Floyd, he repeated “I can’t breathe” several times. And, like George Floyd, his death was videotaped and provoked protests and outrage as he shared around the world.
After Floyd’s death, there was a rapid and visual increase in the number of other people who talked about their father and shared his photo online. She ran when it happened.
“I just got a lot of phone calls and emails like” Have you noticed this video? “He says.
“I don’t see videos of police brutality because of what happened to my father. Everyone [was trying to] say [I] had to touch the family.”
He said he didn’t need to “bomb” them by asking them how they are because he knows the answer.
“They’re hurt. They’re angry. They’re angry. They’re crazy. These are all the feelings you can.”
The new deaths of police are attracting renewed attention and re-emerging old trauma. So it happened to his father — and his notoriety — also exerts pressure. He asked for your opinion.
“My opinion is the same as it was six years ago, that no one deserves to die unjustly at the hands of the police. That’s what my fight is going to be. That will be my goal, which will be my fight.” as those cases come to light.
“It’s like rewinding the tape over and over again.”
“I’m disappointed because so many other people are disappointed,” Heather Schieder told the BBC.
An artist and illustrator from Western New York, she helps maintain an Instagram account where she stores her work. Lately, much of it has been openly anti-racist. Portraits of black victims of police violence rub shoulders with stylized photographs of protests and calls to action.
“I’m partly Egyptian, so when I was a kid I had a little taste for racism,” she said.
She’s Catholic.
“My current church companions are empathetic and organized … middle black voices and paintings to be anti-racist.
“But the circles he used to be in, which were more conservative, were very conservative.
“They said things like ‘all lives matter’ or just deny it to be a problem, or they’re going to feel embarrassed or justify their own racism.’
His paintings have resonated with thousands of people online.
The first portrait of George Floyd, and was based on the tributes he had read, that had been given to him through his friends and family.
“There are so many stories that other people spread about a user, especially a black user killed through law enforcement. I just wanted to use the words of those who knew him.”
Elijah McClain died in August 2019.
The 23-year-old walking in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, where he lived, returning from a convenience store to his home.
A 911 call reported a “suspicious person” matching his description. The police arrested him. A came and, after being strangled and injected with ketamine, died in hospital.
His death was reported in the local press. A handful of demonstrations were held on his behalf. But his case was closed and the police officers involved in his arrest returned to work.
“It hurts because I honestly didn’t perceive why Colorado wasn’t there for Elijah as they were for George Floyd,” his mother, Sheneen McClain, told ABC News.
“Everyone is shouting names now, but … last year, it would have made a difference.
It was through social media that Heather learned what had happened to Elijah.
When he drew it, he published his own words to him, words captured in police cameras after he was arrested.
My call is Elijah McClain. I’m going home. I’m an introvert. I’m just different.
“I see other people responding to these artworks in a way that is painful to them,” Heather said.
Singer Janelle Monae shared McClain’s song and said she would never do it for what happened to her.
“I know my art is probably a source of pain,” Heather said. “It’s a bittersweet thing to see art do its job.”
Without social media, there is no way to convey those messages and raise awareness among victims of police brutality, he added.
While Heather and others have helped magnify the terrible main points of Elijah McClain’s death online and thousands of others have disconnected, tension has been set in the government to take action.
A month before the first anniversary of Elijah’s death, more than 4.5 million people signed a petition calling for justice.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appointed a special prosecutor to review what happened. Aurora police have banned the strangulation used to stop McClain. The new regulations stipulate that officials will have to intercede if they see a co-worker above the upper force. And the police themselves will have to practice a user acting suspiciously before arresting him.
In July, one of the officials involved in the arrest ignored. His colleagues had sent him photographs to reconstruct the strangulation that preceded McClain’s death. Two others were rejected and a fourth resigned.
Victims’ families use social media to verify and attach problems between hashtags and lasting legislative changes.
In June, Emerald Garner and Angelique Kearse took over the Instagram account of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“Right now, social media is everything,” Emerald told the BBC.
“Because there’s nothing we can do right now. The global is closed. We needed this national attention to bring about national change.”
The two, with the help of a handful of Democratic lawmakers who added Warren, his Senate colleague Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, as well as Warren’s 2.4 million fans on Instagram, are pushing for the law to bear the name of their loved ones.
The Eric Garner Act, which criminalizes the use of strangulation through police officers resulting in injury or death, was passed at any of New York State’s homes within a fortnight of George Floyd’s death.
The Andrew Kearse Act, signed in state law less than two weeks later, requires law enforcement to seek medical care for those in their custody and who want it. Otherwise, they may be held liable in a civil court.
The federal bill officially arrived in Washington through Senator Warren and Congressman Pressley on June 19.
“Andrew Kearse is alive now, ” said Congressman Pressley.
“This bill would place some responsibility by retaining officials who refuse to receive medical care to those in their custody and who are criminally guilty of their inaction.”
Meanwhile, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Hakeem Jeffries enact a bicameral law to ban strangulation.
“George Floyd and Eric Garner are alive,” Senator Gillibrand said. “I will fight with my colleagues to pass this law and achieve a meaningful replacement that can no longer wait.”
“We want to rely on Republicans to vote on the bill,” Emerald told the BBC.
“This legislation has the particular purpose of getting rid of bad cops. The time has come.”
Back in Minneapolis, Angelique watches the march she took position the day after my interview.
On the morning of our interview, the circle of family and friends who died in police custody across the United States was on its way to Minneapolis to remember, cry, and ask for change.
“Many of us have no voice and others do not know those they enjoy, so they began calling each and every member of family circles across the country.
“No one perceives unless you’ve been through the situation. We can all perceive our sufferings.”
A circle of relatives shot and killed a man 17 times, others shot him 70 times, he said.
“You have to pass those laws, because too much is too much. We don’t need any other circle of family members to be part of that group.”
That night, a few feet from the place where George Floyd died, her husband’s call was painted on the road.
“Andrew Kearse is despite everything that was heard from New York to Minnesota,” Angelique wrote on Twitter a few days later.
“Andrew, I told you I’d give up.
“I’m going to do you justice.”
His life with others.