No need to recount those awful images. Everybody saw them. They instantly became a powerful symbol that resonated all over the world: āWeāll keep our knee on your neck until you dieā, they seemed to say. It soon appeared that many felt that knee pressure on their necks: The pressure of disrespect and discrimination; the pressure of being robbed of a future; the pressure of brutal repression and control. For the second time, the desperate cry of a man being murdered by the police for having transgressed the rules of commerce, was taken over by thousands: āI canāt breathe!!!ā
But now the cry is much louder, resounding in seven hundred American cities and around the world. Its symbolism too is powerfully resonating. āWe canāt breatheā is a particular apt slogan for today.
We canāt breathe because you stoke hate and violence, racism, nationalism and xenophobia to divide us so you can rule;
We canāt breathe because you take away our means to make a decent living and our hopes for the future while you make the rich ever richer;
We canāt breathe because you poison our environment, as you destroy life on earth for your profits;
We canāt breathe because you facilitate pandemics, and then lock us up and send the lowest paid amongst us, more often than not black or brown men and women, to work in dangerous conditions;
We canāt breathe because, while exalting freedom, your state is an octopus extending its arms into all aspects of life; you spy on us, your police are armies, trained to harass, hunt and kill and most of all, to intimidate us, to keep us small;
We canāt breathe because while you claim to be devoted to justice, you sweat injustice from every pore.
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