Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweet Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. It's been a whole year, and we are still waiting. Let's get started. Today marks one year since Mr.
George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered at the hands of a former Minneapolis police officer, whose name I am intentionally choosing not to speak. Now, the fact that this officer knelt with his knee in Mr. Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, what the most nonchalant look on his face is beyond disturbing. The video was very difficult to watch.
It was traumatic, in a sense. And although worldwide, there have been calls for justice and reimagining of what law enforcement should look like and how it should work and different reforms and budget cuts that are being discussed in various cities and states over this last year, it is very disturbing that Congress has yet to exert its power to change American policing. Now, although it's disappointing, I'm not surprised. I am so not surprised.
And that's just because of the various things that you hear when you're coming and going. The fact that there is a bipartisan negotiation team that's been working for weeks now to tweak what the House has already passed. It's the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. The House says, all right, way to go, let's keep this moving.
Congress, on the other hand, is like, oh, wait. But we have to season this just right. So that we can get enough Republican support to get it through the Senate. And I get that you want to be able to put a bill forward that is going to pass easily.
That you're not going to have all of the shenanigans that we have from time to time with various bills that are trying to be pushed through, right? However, it seems like the sticking point, the issue that is causing the most drama with being able to make this a reality, is the idea of qualified immunity. And for those of you that have no idea what that is, if you haven't heard or maybe you've heard it never bothered to look it up to see what it means, qualified immunity shields police officers from most civil lawsuits. And that seems to be the biggest obstacle, the biggest barrier right now that this bill is facing.
Now, before I get back to qualified immunity, I've just been thinking about a lot of things. And first off, it bothers me to think that out of calamity, confusion, and loss seems like it takes those types of things for change to occur, for people's eyes to be opened. And the situation with Mr. Floyd is no different.
It falls right into line with that whole situation that it united people. His death united people. It created activists. But I'm beginning to wonder, though, because it's been a year now, Congress hasn't done what they should have done.
And there was a lot of talk at one point. People were talking actively. This was a thing. And not saying it's not a thing now, but I feel like the conversations have kind of settled down because other things have happened and have caught people's attention.
People have short attention spans. So I'm wondering, were some of these people that were right there, right behind Black Lives Matter, were they doing this for clout? Was this so that they could go to a rally or a protest with a sign and take pictures and post it on their Facebook page? Were they doing it for looks and likes?
Or were they really doing it because it really meant something to them? That's what I questioned. That's what I wonder. Because in looking up some information by way of mapping police violence.org, I found that 181 Black people have been killed since Mr.
Floyd has at the hands of police. And I can't say that I've heard 181 different stories. But where's the outrage? Where is the demands for change?
I feel like it's kind of gone a little quiet. And once again, like I said, that's disturbing. OK, so let's head on back down the road to the qualified immunity stop. It's crazy to me that Republicans have raised the concern that by weakening the provision of qualified immunity, wow, man, that could cause a problem for officers because they'll be facing all these excessive lawsuits.
Are you freaking kidding me? Maybe they need to face excessive lawsuits if they're out there doing the wrong thing excessively, right? Isn't that how this is supposed to work? But Republicans, let me ask you this.
For all the people that are stuck in jail now because they didn't have enough money to bond themselves out, where are people going to get all this extra money to be bringing forth all of these excessive lawsuits? Are they crowdfunding these things? Are they passing the hat in church? What is really happening?
What's happening in your brain that makes you think that all of a sudden it's going to be a docket full of police officers every day. And they're going to have to create police officer court because it's going to be so many docket police officers that got these excessive lawsuits out against them that we got to create their own system where they don't have to tie up everybody else's stuff. Because common man ain't going to be able to get a date on the docket because all these policemen are going to be sitting there looking sad, having their date in court. I'm not buying that.
That is the most crazy thing I've ever heard of. And then on top of that, I may be completely off the mark on this one. But I thought that's what unions were for. You got these police unions.
Aren't they supposed to be there to support and give backing to their members? So should something come up, then the police union steps in and assist with that? I don't understand what the problem is. Is it something wrong with my lens?
Do I need to clean my lens off? Because I don't see the problem here. And why are people concerned anyway? Why are you worried about if the next man ends up having to go to court?
Is that such a bad thing? Because the meet to me, the bad thing is that people that look like me don't get their day in court. Because police officers are killing them. This man, Mr.
Floyd, was killed because an unexperienced clerk at a little store called 911 because Mr. Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill. This man lost his life over $20. And I know you're like, well, he was resisting getting in the car.
Yeah, but did you hear the rest of the story about how he complied? He sat down. He got handcuffed. Dude said he was claustrophobic.
I can't get in his body to tell him, yay, or nay, whether he is claustrophobic or not. But what I have seen and what I do know is that it seems like police officers, because they're so used to having the power and being in control and having things go their way, they tend to kind of throw their weight around. And I'm speaking from experience. Not never been shoved into a car or anything, but I have been talked rather nastily to a bi-police officer who was throwing his weight around, just to be nasty.
And so, yeah, I'm really struggling with the idea that Republicans need to have their backs massaged and their feet rubbed and everything to try to bring them to the table to say, OK, this is good enough, now we can pass it on and keep it moving. Well, that was today's episode of Tweet Trends. Thank you for joining me. And before I go, I just want to say that I think it's very commendable that the president was pushing to try to have this police reform bill in place by today.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen, but hopefully Karen Bass, Cory Booker, and Tim Stott, who are the lead negotiators on this bill, hopefully they'll be able to continue to work and get everybody to compromise or something, but not so much just for the people in the room, but it needs to be something that works for we the people. And so speaking of us, we need to make sure that we remain diligent. We have to continue to stay in contact with those elected officials and let them know what it is that we are thinking and how we think they should be voting because they're supposed to be voting on our behalf, not on their own, right? So we got to continue to maintain that contact.
We have to be mindful and make sure that we know what's going on, so we have to stay up to date. We have to be in the know. We have to keep track of what is going on, because if we don't, if we get sidetracked by the next new TikTok dance video, then we're gonna have some problems. And we don't need that in our life.
We got enough problems as it is, right? So stay in contact with them and let them know, because if you let them go, then we end up with a bunch of rogue Republicans and distracted Democrats. And seriously, do we have time for that? Not hardly.
All right, but what we do have time for is for you guys to head on over to Twitter, follow me at heveveveve. That's at H-E-V-E-T-T-E, or just look for the hashtag tweet trends. And I will look for you back here again on Thursday. Take care.