Eric Garner Ruling Fails America…Again

Yesterday America faced another giant blow to our faith in the justice system when a grand jury refused to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking Eric Garner to death, a black unarmed man in Staten Island. His only offense was selling loosies. This ruling came despite video footage from a bystander and the fact that chokeholds are banned by NYPD as a takedown method.

New Yorkers protested from Harlem to Rockefeller Center, disrupting the annual tree lighting:

On the streets of the city, from Tompkinsville to Times Square, many expressed their outrage with some of the last words Mr. Garner uttered before being wrestled to the ground: “This stops today,” people chanted. “I can’t breathe,” others shouted. While hundreds of angry but generally peaceful demonstrators took to the streets in Manhattan as well as in Washington and other cities, the police in New York reported relatively few arrests, a stark contrast to the riots that unfolded in Ferguson in the hours after the grand jury decision was announced in the Brown case.

Social media reported many of the actions and anger at the outcome of the ruling.

Team Blackness discussed the case, the outrage, and the reality and rage of being black in America.

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