Please read Baruch professor Regina A. Bernard’s essay, ‘Why We Can’t Breathe:”

“This essay, this moment in my life, was supposed to be about something else. This was supposed to be about my body. This wasn’t supposed to be about a man I never met, never heard of, never saw face to face, but for whom I felt the breath he couldn’t take. I did not start this essay with the intention of writing about George Floyd, but in my final edits of something else, in my periphery, I saw George Floyd on my television screen as he lay on asphalt, hands bound by the metal bracelets that are supposed to be reserved for “bad guys.” He was groaning beneath the officer who pressed a knee down on his neck. I stopped typing. I sat, frozen, watching an execution take place. A tear hit my computer keys. This man is being murdered. This is not the thing of nightmares. This is happening in broad daylight and there are people watching…too afraid to push the officer off Floyd’s neck. A second officer, pacing nearby, enforcing what he must have deemed appropriate, admonished George’s people. I heard their pleas, their screams, and their protest somewhere offscreen, disembodied, in the cut of what was happening….”

#blacklivesmatter #georgefloyd