Hello everyone! I’m sorry that this blog is coming so late in the week, work has been chaotic and I’m still adjusting back to being at work, but I promise the next blog will come earlier in the week. Anyways this week I will be talking about my views on the George Floyd and following black lives matter protests. If you’ve been living under a mountain of rocks, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer for using an accused forged note at a store. The police officer had his knee on George’s neck for over 8 minutes and he later died from asphyxiation at the hospital. This was recorded on video and has sparked global outrage at the continued racism in America as well as the rest of the world. Petitions were started to get justice for George and protests started up all across the country.

At first these protests were mostly peaceful with the black community and all the other communities standing together for the black lives matter movement. I have never seen such a long period of Twitter being so outraged and I think its fantastic. Racism has been going on for far too long and has absolutely no place in modern society (or any society in fact).

These protests haven’t stayed peaceful though. Mass looting started occurring throughout America which caused Trump to make a horrendous tweet saying, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and ever since then, the movement hasn’t been the same. Protests have been much more violent with thousands of people being arrested and videos popping up all over twitter of acts of police brutality to unarmed protestors as well as violent protestors attacking the police. I personally stand with these protestors as peaceful protests just weren’t bringing any justice for George Floyd and wasn’t making a change to racism however I feel for all of the victims in the protest such as people wrongly brutalised by police and store owners that have had their store destroyed. During this time, I had to take a break from social media as it was a very hateful and negative place, but it is all necessary to make positive change in the world.

The line that has been crossed that I disagree with is the violent protests in England with a statue being torn down and thrown in a river as well as police horses being abused when the horses themselves obviously aren’t racist. While I feel its wrong to have statues of slave owners and racists on the streets, I feel like if they are a significant part of history, they should be displayed in a museum. This has been very controversial and highly debated for the last couple of weeks and maybe I’m wrong, but this is my opinion. As for the horses, everyone’s in agreement that they shouldn’t have been attacked during the protests as its just cruel. In general, I feel like the protests in England have been slightly done for the wrong purposes. Now let me know if I’m wrong but I feel like police brutality is not a big issue in England, yet police are still being constantly attacked during these protests. I feel that the protests should be focused on getting justice for victims of racism and police brutality as well as the black lives matter movement in general, not just to assault the police. In my hometown there was a peaceful protest which seems to have been a fantastic event and created a more positive and wholesome atmosphere in the town.

I think for now that’s all I have to say on the topic, I am open to discussion if you disagree with any of my points as I understand that this is a very sensitive topic and sometimes, I’m just a complete dumbass.

<3 Jordan