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A Year On From George Floyd’s Death, Police Violence Continues

Can Biden administration make a difference?

Manny Otiko
5 min readMay 26, 2021
Lorie Shaull/Flickr

It’s been a year since cell phone video captured Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin choking George Floyd, an African American man, to death. The video quickly went viral and led to historic nationwide and international protests.

I first watched the video at 4 a.m. on The Washington Post’s website and knew that it would be a huge story. I also swore never to watch the entire video again. The George Floyd protests were comparable to Civil Rights-era marches. Corporate America also got involved and Black-focused organizations were flooded with donations. Other corporations promised to review diversity issues.

Global impact

As America tried to tackle police violence, some European countries, which had been critical of United States’-based police violence, were forced to confront issues at home. France finally came to terms with the fact that it had a problem with police using deadly violence against people of African and Arab descent.

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Manny Otiko
Manny Otiko

Written by Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him at @mannyotiko.bsky.social

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