ATLANTA (AP) — Tweet: In the two weeks since George Floyd’s killing, cities around the nation have begun implementing changes such as banning chokeholds.
ATLANTA (AP) — Tweet: In the two weeks since George Floyd’s killing, cities around the nation have begun implementing changes such as banning chokeholds. But advocates and demonstrators say they are pushing for long-term reform, not quick concessions.
In the two weeks since George Floyd’s killing, police departments have banned chokeholds, Confederate monuments have fallen and officers have been arrested and charged amid large global protests against violence by police and racism.
The moves are far short of the overhaul of police, prosecutors’ offices, courts and other institutions that protesters seek. But some advocates and demonstrators say they are encouraged by the swiftness of the response to Floyd’s death — incremental as it may be.
“Everywhere you look, you see something that gives you hope,” said Frank James Matthews,64, an activist in Alabama. “But we have no illusions because something that’s embedded like racism is hard to kill.”
Matthews spent years pushing for the removal of a Confederate monument in Birmingham near the site where four black girls died in a racist church bombing in 1963. The city took down the obelisk last week after protesters tried to remove it themselves during one of the many nationwide demonstrations over Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis.
At a memorial for Floyd on Monday in Houston, Bracy Burnett said it was hard to tell if the changes that have taken place since Floyd’s death will last.
