George Clooney Pens Powerful Essay on George Floyd's Murder: 'We Need Systemic Change'
George Clooney has written a powerful essay in the aftermath of George Floyd‘s tragic murder.
“There is little doubt that George Floyd was murdered. We watched as he took his last breath at the hands of four police officers,” the -year-old actor and activist wrote in the essay published by The Daily Beast. “Now we see another defiant reaction to the systemic cruel treatment of a portion of our citizens like we saw in 1968, 1992, and 2014. We don’t know when these protests will subside. We hope and pray that no one else will be killed. But we also know that very little will change.”
George went on, wondering what we all can do following senseless murders that didn’t have to happen and shouldn’t have.
“The anger and the frustration we see playing out once again in our streets is just a reminder of how little we’ve grown as a country from our original sin of slavery,” George continued on. “The fact that we aren’t actually buying and selling other human beings anymore is not a badge of honor.”
“We need systemic change in our law enforcement and in our criminal justice system. We need policymakers and politicians that reflect basic fairness to all of their citizens equally. Not leaders that stoke hatred and violence as if the idea of shooting looters could ever be anything less than a racial dog whistle. Bull Connor was more subtle.”
George adds that “this is our pandemic. It infects all of us, and in 400 years we’ve yet to find a vaccine. It seems we’ve stopped even looking for one and we just try to treat the wound on an individual basis. And we sure haven’t done a very good job of that.”
“So this week, as we’re wondering what it’s going to take to fix these seemingly insurmountable problems, just remember we created these issues so we can fix them. And there is only one way in this country to bring lasting change: Vote.”
If you didn’t see, George Floyd‘s autopsy was completed independently and his real cause of death was revealed.