“I Can’t Breathe”

The police officer ignores the plea, “Please, please. I can’t breathe,” George Floyd gasps out.  “I can’t breathe, officer.” A bystander addresses the officers: “He is human, bro.” The cop is unphased and keeps his knee in place cutting off Floyd’s breath. After five minutes he is motionless and silent. A bystander notes the unbelievable but obvious: “They just killed that man.”  It is obvious from the video released on the internet that for ten minutes the officer drove his knee into Floyd’s neck. Despite pleas from bystanders, the officer showed no pity or compassion.

Six years ago, another black man, Eric Garner, pleaded with police officers in New York City who held him in a chokehold, saying “I can’t breathe.” He was choked to death and his cry, “I can’t breathe,” became the slogan and chant against police brutality.  

The final words of Frank Gabrin, the first ER doctor to die of coronavirus were, “I can’t breathe, help me.” His partner reports, “he was gasping for air in great, hoarse breaths, but could not get enough oxygen.” By the time paramedics arrived, Gabrin was on the edge of death, or had already gone. His face had turned purple.

 Dr. Byron Safewright indicates that this is a common refrain. “When people came to the hospital, it was because they couldn’t breathe. But when they had oxygen, it just didn’t help. They still were fighting for air. It doesn’t matter how much oxygen we give you — it doesn’t improve the problem.” The coronavirus can infect the respiratory tract, irritating and inflaming the airways. As the infection travels through the respiratory tract, the immune system fights back but this causes airways to become even more swollen and inflamed. As the body fights back suffocation results.

Some of Gabrin’s final texts before contracting the virus were, “Don’t have any PPE that has not been used. No N95 masks ― my own goggles — my own face shield.” He is one of numerous, and as of yet uncounted, medical workers across the U.S. who have succumbed to the virus, many of whom have died due to lack of personal protective equipment (PPE).  State legislators and health care providers across the country called on the Trump administration to help with the lack of PPE but the administration maintains it is the states’ responsibility to procure PPE and Donald Trump has deemed the shortage “fake news.”

Columbia University recently released a study showing 36,000 fewer people would have died in the midst of the crisis if the U.S. had acted just one week earlier to impose social distancing. If the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, 83 percent of the nation’s deaths would have been avoided, researchers estimated. President Trump called Columbia University a “liberal, disgraceful institution” after it released the study.   

Vanity Fair reports that heading into the Memorial Day weekend, Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Trump said to an adviser.

There are many ways to bring on asphyxiation but the most well-known is crucifixion. Pierre Barbet describes crucifixion as “death by asphyxiation.” The crucified have severe difficulty inhaling, as the chest, with arms outstretched, is expanded and unable to take in more air. The struggle is to pull the body up, either with the arms or the legs (which explains why breaking the legs insured a quick death), so as to be able to take in air, but one becomes exhausted. As with COVID-19, it is actually the attempt to fight for life that kills. It is a slow process of exhaustion and suffocation, very much like having a knee thrust into the throat so as to shut off oxygen. The more one cries out the greater the loss of oxygen. Crucifixion was preserved for those considered less than human and it was deployed as a means to frighten slaves into maintaining their station without rebellion or complaint.

The state requires sacrifice so as to maintain an ordered world – that of the slave or capitalistic economy. The knee of state, literal or metaphorical, requires the asphyxiation of the most vulnerable. The question is whether to identify with the powers that would vie for the economy, for “law and order,” or whether to identify with the vulnerable being asphyxiated.  

Jason Rodenbeck challenges us to do the right thing:

kill me with George Floyd

murdered in public by
the powers’ enforcers over
vague accusations before
mobs of bystanders, some
begging for mercy, he gasped

“I can’t breathe.”

and then he died.
what terrible crime must he have done
to be worthy of such treatment?
would it have even mattered if
he was innocent?

…

murdered in public by
the powers’ enforcers over
vague accusations before
mobs of bystanders, some
begging for mercy, he gasped

“I’m thirsty.”

and, when he had
asked forgiveness for them,
then he died. alone.

what terrible crime had he done?
nothing more than loving George Floyd.
and on his cross he gasped with George
on the pavement.

it didn’t even matter that
he was innocent.

I suppose it’s easy at 3 AM from the
quiet safety of my dining room to say
“I’d rather die with George Floyd than
suffer another to die alone.”

I’m sure it will be much harder to speak
when it happens in front of me,
and I am tempted to retreat to the
quiet safety of my whiteness.

but I hope in my heart that,
if that time comes I will
have the courage say to those officers

“if you really must kill someone,
kill me with George Floyd.”[1]

---

[1] Found On His Blog, “Thinking Peacefully,” https://jasonrodenbeck.wordpress.com/2020/05/27/kill-me-with-george-floyd/?fbclid=IwAR2gWip5xURX_8l4ZNacvPDnJIzCVDNlPgYADeDXQptGMWtWC9ooftdOycY