I don't even have anything particular to say, really, that isn't being said by anybody else, about the apparent finding of the Staten Island grand jury that nothing wrong occurred when Eric Garner was killed. I'm sad. I don't understand how this happens. I'm not interested in the arcana differentiating choke holds from vascular holds. There's no technical explanation that can justify the death of Eric Garner to me. Every time this happens, and it keeps happening, it is a terrible, terrible failure on the part of the police and the criminal justice system. They're doing it wrong, and somebody should pay; that's how we stop abuses, if we stop them at all.
Killing people other than in self-defense is supposed to be against the law in every state. There aren't exceptions for police officers. I'm sad for the family of Eric Garner to receive this evidence that their lives are not valued by those who are paid to protect them. Embarrassed as a New York patriot that we can't do any better than a bunch of jerks in de facto segregated Missouri (sorry, New York, you don't have bragging rights on that either). Glad the Justice Department is on this case, as also on the case of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson; I could spend some time arguing how this is another example of how the federal executive is better equipped than other levels and branches of government to deal with difficult issues, but I don't feel like doing it.
Some months after my last big cancer surgery the arytenoid cartilages started to swell around my windpipe, apparently an effect of radiation treatment, shrinking the airhole so that I couldn't get quite enough air to be comfortable, the way I imagine an asthma attack feels only slow and gradual, and it would be worse if I was exerting myself at all, I mean at first climbing stairs and later merely walking fast, and eventually it became terrifying: I remember, finally, sitting down on the sidewalk on Upper Broadway, not in full control of my bladder, just waiting until I had enough air to stand up again. I made it, moving really slowly and resting every few steps, into the subway and down to the hospital where they punched a hole in my throat so I could breathe through that. The hole is still there, held by a little plastic button that's much less oppressive than the traditional trach. I'm doing really well, I may even be able to close the thing up some day (just talked to the doctor about it, coincidentally), and I'm really lucky in many ways, I'm not complaining here. I'm grateful; I can get an almost druggy pleasure out of just breathing attentively, very slowly filling my lungs as big as they'll go and then letting it out.
Demonstrators in New York have been chanting Garner's last words, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" the way the Ferguson protestors said "Hands up, don't shoot!" When Garner's wife Esaw spoke to a crowd she found herself using the expression "as long as I have a breath in my body" and Mayor de Blasio, coming out to talk to the people last night about the grand jury decision, began with a deep, deep sigh, as if to dwell for a moment on the wondrousness of the breath that had been taken away from Eric Garner. I did have something to say after all: that I can't think about how Eric Garner was killed without an immediate sense of how, physically, it felt.
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| Eric and Esaw Garner, via New York Daily News. |
Killing people other than in self-defense is supposed to be against the law in every state. There aren't exceptions for police officers. I'm sad for the family of Eric Garner to receive this evidence that their lives are not valued by those who are paid to protect them. Embarrassed as a New York patriot that we can't do any better than a bunch of jerks in de facto segregated Missouri (sorry, New York, you don't have bragging rights on that either). Glad the Justice Department is on this case, as also on the case of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson; I could spend some time arguing how this is another example of how the federal executive is better equipped than other levels and branches of government to deal with difficult issues, but I don't feel like doing it.
Some months after my last big cancer surgery the arytenoid cartilages started to swell around my windpipe, apparently an effect of radiation treatment, shrinking the airhole so that I couldn't get quite enough air to be comfortable, the way I imagine an asthma attack feels only slow and gradual, and it would be worse if I was exerting myself at all, I mean at first climbing stairs and later merely walking fast, and eventually it became terrifying: I remember, finally, sitting down on the sidewalk on Upper Broadway, not in full control of my bladder, just waiting until I had enough air to stand up again. I made it, moving really slowly and resting every few steps, into the subway and down to the hospital where they punched a hole in my throat so I could breathe through that. The hole is still there, held by a little plastic button that's much less oppressive than the traditional trach. I'm doing really well, I may even be able to close the thing up some day (just talked to the doctor about it, coincidentally), and I'm really lucky in many ways, I'm not complaining here. I'm grateful; I can get an almost druggy pleasure out of just breathing attentively, very slowly filling my lungs as big as they'll go and then letting it out.
Demonstrators in New York have been chanting Garner's last words, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" the way the Ferguson protestors said "Hands up, don't shoot!" When Garner's wife Esaw spoke to a crowd she found herself using the expression "as long as I have a breath in my body" and Mayor de Blasio, coming out to talk to the people last night about the grand jury decision, began with a deep, deep sigh, as if to dwell for a moment on the wondrousness of the breath that had been taken away from Eric Garner. I did have something to say after all: that I can't think about how Eric Garner was killed without an immediate sense of how, physically, it felt.
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