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Members of Black Lives Matter protest on the fifth anniversary of the death of Eric Garner, a day after federal prosecutors announced their decision not to prosecute NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo or other officers for charges related to his death, in New York, U.S., July 17, 2019.
Eric Garner’s ‘I Can’t Breathe’ and its echo through time
Tomorrow marks 10 years since the tragic death of Eric Garner at the hands of police violence. His death sparked mass protests in New York City and other US cities, significantly influencing the Black Lives Matter movement.
On July 17, 2014, in Staten Island, New York, police officers approached Garner, a Black man, for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. The situation escalated as police moved to arrest him. Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed Garner in a chokehold – violating NYPD policy – which ultimately led to Garner’s death.
Footage of the incident, which a bystander captured on a cellphone, showed Garner repeatedly stating, “I can’t breathe.” These words became a rallying cry against police brutality. Pantaleo was not charged with a crime, which led to outrage in New York City, but he was ultimately fired from the force in 2019 after a departmental trial.
In June 2020, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomosigned a law named after Garner that outlawed the use of police chokeholds. This came shortly after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck. Bystanders captured video of the fatal incident, during which Floyd could be heard saying the same three words Garner used: “I can’t breathe.”
Floyd’s death sparked the largest racial justice protests in the US since the Civil Rights Movement. The demonstrations and the concerns that galvanized them provided a boost to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, as voters believed Democrats would be more likely to take steps to address racial injustice.
Fallout from riots in France
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody, and a happy Fourth to you. Just a couple of days in Nantucket. Very enjoyable. And wanted to talk a little bit about a place that is a little less enjoyable right now, which is France.
You've seen massive riots across the country over almost a week, the worst in nearly 20 years in France, which is really saying something for that country. Social protest is basically taken as sport and riots are frequent. But even in that context, this has been notable and exceptional. What what sparked it off has nothing to do with extending pensions from 62 to 64. Those were major demonstrations across the country, but basically just shut down the economy for a period of time. Not so much violent protests. No, these violent riots and lootings and the like were set off by the French police gunning down a 17 year old French boy about Algerian descent. He was trying to get away from the police. They were trying to stop him. The police immediately said that he was killed in self-defense, that he was trying to run the police over. That turned out very quickly to be a lie because there was video capturing the French gunning at him as he was trying to get away and that it's kind of a George Floyd type situation in France. The response is deeply political. In other words, what you believe about who is responsible depends very little on the facts of the case and overwhelmingly on where you happen to stand politically. On the one hand, you've got Muslims that are seen by the right in France as taking over French identity, as not really being French. Big structural problems in France, in the suburbs outside of the wealthier French cities where most of the Muslim population lives. A lot of drug trafficking there, a lot of violent crime, a lot of poverty. If you ask the average French citizen what percentage of the population is Muslim, on average, they respond by saying a third, which is insane. It's actually some 10%. But that sensibility gives you a sense of how this is played on the right politically in France.
On the left, you're blaming the police, which treats Muslims considerably worse than than non-Muslims in France. One recent study in France showed that Muslims were 20 times more likely to be asked to shown their papers by police than others in routine traffic stops. 17 drivers, almost all Muslims, have been shot dead by the French police in the last year and a half. Now, if you're an American, you you see that and you say, hey, only 17, that's not actually that bad. That sounds like a bad weekend in Chicago, right on the south side. But but this is like in the United States, an issue that has not been dealt with, an issue that is being swept under the rug. Macron needs the police on his side so he doesn't push them very hard. But he has come out and immediately said this was unacceptable behavior and has detained the French police officer. And the hard right is pushing down on Macron really, really strongly as a consequence. Meanwhile, these are not peaceful protests. I want to be very clear. This is widespread looting. This is arson. It's violence, and well over 500 police injured as a consequence of all of it. So it is it is a pretty big deal. The far left in France is condemning the police. They have taken the side clearly of not just the protesters, but many actively even supporting the rioters and the looters, the far right defending the police and specifically the detained police officer and some even talking about these areas of of Muslims in France being called foreign enclaves, even though a majority of those living there are French citizens.
And the danger here is that while Macron is a creature of the center in politically and trying to balance both sides, the reality is that both the far left and the far right are going to get more popular across France on the back of this episode. And so, I mean, democracy and democratic institutions in France are getting weaker. The present trajectory for democracy in France is in trouble, frankly, just much as it is in the United States, much as it is in Brazil, where I just was last week. I am happy to say that after six days of of violence and rioting and looting, today life in France is a lot more calm. Politically, this looks bad for Macron on the international stage. King Charles had to cancel a visit. Macron had to cancel a state visit that was quite important to go to Germany over the weekend. He's got a respite for the time being, but you wouldn't say it's because he's managed it well. You'd say this is a structural problem that is only going to get worse in France going forward, and we'll be watching it very closely.
So that's the news for Monday, and I hope everyone has a happy Fourth tomorrow if you're in the United States, for those that celebrate, as they say, and for all the rest of us, let's keep on keep it on. Talk to you soon.
French riots highlight policing problem
Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics.
Does France have a policing problem?
Well, I mean, primarily they got a riot problem. This is a third major wave of severe riots that President Macron is facing. The first was the "yellow vests," as they were called. The second was the protest over pension reforms, which was more overtly political. And this has been triggered by the police killing a young guy in a Paris suburb a couple of days ago. It's a severe issue. They do have a police problem, although substantially less than we find in the United States. Let's see what happens. President Macron has been forced to cancel his important visit to Berlin in order to focus on these issues. Let's see what happens. It's a rather French phenomenon.
What's been the fallout of the coup or the mutiny attempt in Moscow?
Well, the answer to that is that we simply don't know. We don't know exactly what happened during the day of the mutiny of the rebellion. We know even less perhaps of the fallout that is going to play out over quite some time. When these things happened, they fundamentally shake a regime, and this regime has been shaken. Putin is now trying to regain strength in different ways. To some extent, he might succeed. To some extent, it's highly unlikely that he will succeed. So, the development of Russia has entered a new phase. Whether this will have an effect on the battlefield. We haven't seen that as of yet. But there's a lot on this that we haven't seen as of yet.
George Floyd Police Reform Bill unlikely to pass Senate
Jon Lieber, Managing Director of the United States for the Eurasia Group, shares his insights on US politics:
With the conviction of Derek Chauvin, will there be a George Floyd Policing Reform Bill?
Unlikely right now. It's possible, but there's a big divide between Republicans and Democrats over the issue of eliminating qualified immunity. Democrats want to get rid of it. Republicans want to keep it in order to make sure that cops aren't exposed to too much liability while they're on the job. And to get anything done in the Senate, you need 60 votes, which would, of course, require 10 Republicans. So, conversations are likely to be ongoing, but this issue went nowhere during the Trump administration because both sides decided they wanted something, to make something political out of it, and I don't think that much is going to change now.
Why did President Biden flip-flop on the refugee cap?
President Biden promised during the campaign that he would lift President Trump's refugee cap from 15,000 to its old level of 65,000. But with a surging migrant crisis on the southern border, Biden decided this wasn't a priority and changed his mind a little bit on undoing the refugee cap. The administration announced this last Friday and there was a lot of pushback from migrant and refugee advocates against them for doing so. They later that evening flip-flopped again and said that sometime in May they were going to announce a new policy that would satisfy most of their allies on the left. But the issue of the border is still a big one for President Biden, one that's been dormant for quite some time. But with a surging number of children in particular rising on the southern border, it's not going to go away.
Will Washington, DC become the 51st state?
I'm standing here on a street corner in DC and I think the answer is probably also unlikely. And the reason is similar to the George Floyd Bill, that you cannot get 60 votes in the Senate to pass this. You'd have to eliminate the filibuster and even if you did that, it's unclear today if there are 50 Democrats in the Senate who would favor doing so. The House has now passed the bill multiple times to make DC a state, but the outlook in the Senate is just not that good. Stay tuned, because this is going to be a really important political issue throughout the year, especially as the Democrats look at the likelihood they might lose the House of Representatives next year.
Why are young people fed up in Nigeria?
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has been rocked for two weeks by major unrest, as youth-led groups have hit the streets to protest police brutality and the lack of jobs. The demonstrations caught authorities by surprise — could they herald a broader and more permanent shift in which young Nigerians demand a bigger say in shaping their country's future?
#EndSARS. The rallies began on October 5 in Edo and Delta states over a viral video of a man being beaten to death by alleged members of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), and soon spread to Lagos, the country's largest city and economic hub. Hundreds of activists demanded the government disband the famously trigger-happy federal police unit, accused of hundreds of extrajudicial killings since it was established in 1992.
Just days later, the protests ballooned to tens of thousands of people and expanded to other cities and the capital, Abuja. The hashtag #EndSARS became immensely popular on social media and captured global attention from the Nigerian diaspora in Europe and the Americas, as well as celebrities and influencers in the US, including Black Lives Matter.
Faced with mounting pressure, President Muhammadu Buhari — a former general who led a military junta that ruled Nigeria in the early 1980s but was elected as a civilian in 2015 — agreed to disband SARS. But rather than calm the streets, it has energized a new generation of protesters whose grievances go well beyond police brutality alone.
Jobless youth. Although Nigeria is one of the world's top oil producers, corruption and economic mismanagement have squandered that wealth for decades. The economic impact of COVID-19 has only made things worse, as the oil sector — which accounts for 60 percent of government revenues and is the key to any economic recovery — is suffering a pandemic-fueled global slump in commodity prices.
The current economic crisis has hit the youth particularly hard, with a whopping 63 percent of Nigerians under 30 now jobless or underemployed, eight percentage points higher than the overall working-age population. (It's hard to know what the youth labor market looked like immediately before the pandemic, since the last statistics are from the third quarter of 2018).
A generational shift in the making. More than half of Nigeria's 206 million people are under 30, and the median age is 18.4. But young Nigerians have been politically disengaged for generations in a country where turnout for national elections rarely exceeds 40 percent.
But if the current protests do boost youth voter engagement, there could be big consequences down the line. Young Nigerians tend to favor action on economic and social justice instead of the traditional GDP growth and security issues that establishment politicians now focus on.
Ahead of the 2023 general election, any party that can tap into this politically dormant giant constituency would be very competitive in ways that could fundamentally change Nigerian politics.
What happens next? As the protests continue despite a curfew in Lagos and under the watchful eye of anti-riot police, the security forces are getting anxious. Activists have accused the cops of deploying armed thugs to break them up, while the army has already threatened to intervene. Whether or not there's a crackdown, young Nigerians have thrown down the gauntlet — and they will be a political force to be reckoned with sooner than you think.
Toronto the next Silicon Valley; AI in policing; NYC Marathon
Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of WIRED, discusses technology industry news today:
Will Toronto become the next Silicon Valley?
A lot of really smart engineers are going to Toronto instead of the United States because of this country's self-defeating immigration policies. Building Silicon Valley requires even more. And ideally, there will be time for the United States to reverse all of its bad policies.
What role should AI play in policing?
There's a big scandal. Face recognition algorithms leading to an unjust arrest of a man for the very first time. Not surprisingly, this algorithms tend to not recognize black people. The man who was arrested in Detroit was black. I do not think that police departments should be relying on facial recognition for anything more than basic lead generation.
The New York City Marathon was just canceled. When will you next feel comfortable running a marathon?
I think it's going to be a while. I'd run a small marathon. People spaced out. Not one where there are thousands of people hunched together at the start.
GOP & police reform bill; US public on reopening; Biden's lead on Trump
Jon Lieber, managing director for the United States at Eurasia Group, provides his perspective:
What is the status of the federal police reform bill?
Well, the House has passed a bill already and the Senate has their own version. The big differences between the two is that the Senate bill doesn't ban chokeholds. It doesn't ban no knock warrants. And it allows qualified immunity for police to continue. Senate Democrats have said this is unacceptable. The bill cannot be fixed and have refused to even allow it to come to the floor of the Senate for debate. Not a great moment in U.S. congressional history. And it looks like this isn't going to happen.
Three and a half months into lockdown. Where does the American public stand on reopening?
Definitely reopening activity has gotten Americans out of their houses. In April, mobility data showed that about 19 percent of people visited friends and family, so far in June it's more like just around 50 percent have visited friends and family. People are moving around more. There's more activity in places where coronavirus cases are spiking. But public opinion polling also shows that people are willing to stay at home. Eighty percent of Americans say they will stay at home if ordered by the CDC or their governor or if there's a spike in cases or a decrease in hospital capacity. So people are still scared about the virus even as life returns to normal.
How durable is Biden's lead over Trump?
Well, this is really the million-dollar question for the election year this year. A lot of bad polls for President Trump recently. A poll came out today showing him down by three points in Ohio, which he won by 10 points in 2016. And another poll showing him down by 13 points nationally to former Vice President Biden. Long summer ahead of us there. Still four and a half months left in this campaign. A lot can happen. Two factors I think, may work in President Trump's favor. The first is former Vice President Biden's age, which has yet to really be exploited on the campaign trail. And I expect President Trump to make an issue out of that. And the second is any backlash from the recent protest movements and the tearing down of statues in the streets, which President Trump is also going to be keenly attuned to. However, with a bad economy and these bad poll numbers, he's certainly the underdog right now. He's got a lot of ground to make up.
Justice for Adama Traoré: Police brutality in France
The George Floyd protests in the United States have inspired countries around the world to take a closer look at their own problems with police brutality and racism. In France, thousands have recently taken to the streets to demand justice for Adama Traoré, a Frenchman of African origin who died in police custody in 2016. But how similar are the French and American experiences with policing and racial injustice?
To learn more, GZERO's Alex Kliment sat down with Mathieu Zagrodzki, a lecturer on policing and sociology at the University of Versailles. France has far fewer police killings than the US, Zagrodzki says, but he also points out a peculiarity of the French system that makes it impossible for the government know how extensive racial discrimination by the police might actually be.