The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/george-floyd/)
In the event “Learning from the George Floyd Rebellion: Social Movements and Black Freedom Struggles Today,” speakers Prof. A.K. Thompson, sociology, Ithaca College, and Prof. Russell Rickford, history drew on their varying backgrounds to approach the topics of social movements and struggles for freedom from a combined sociological and historical perspective.
Black America has no stutter. Their demands for equality and justice and safety ring loud and clear. The issue is that these calls fall on deaf ears.
To the Editor:
As individuals and as professors, we oppose racism in all its forms. We are outraged by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and by the killings of countless other Black people who have lost their lives as a result of racialized violence. We are also outraged by commentators, some of them attached to Ivy League Institutions, who are leading a smear campaign against Black Lives Matter. In describing the protests, they deliberately use terms like “wilding,” a racially loaded term coined in 1989 to describe the imagined actions of five innocent Black teenagers (Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam) who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for the assault of a White jogger. These commentators express rage over the sporadic looting that has taken place amidst the largely peaceful protests, calling for organized manhunts to track down those responsible. Theirs is a form of racism that gives cover to those police who use their batons and tear gas and rubber bullets and fists to silence and maim their critics.
President Martha E. Pollack, fire Collum.
Study. Act. Celebrate. Grieve. Repeat.
To even say there’s an end to all of this feels like a dream, like an answer to a childish question that the bleakness of this reality has forced us to stop asking.
In front of the Ithaca Police Department, after a peaceful march filled with chants from the heart of Cornell’s campus to the Commons, a light rain began. The crowd of over a thousand knelt on the pavement in front of the police department for eight minutes and 46 seconds — the time it took for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to suffocate George Floyd to death.
I kneel in prayer for peace and justice and in solidarity with the protest.
The statue could be seen with the red spray-painted words for under two hours.
White supremacists targeted Tompkins County legislator Anna Kelles (D-2nd District) and a campaign supporter through anonymous emails in late May, the campaign said in a Monday press release. Kelles is a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 125th New York Assembly District.