Movement is going to change the world Pastor points to push against police brutality, racial prejudice since Floyd's death

• June, 10 2020 à 17:15
• Jean-Claude Dorsainvil
• Politique
• 0 Comments

Roxie Washington holds Gianna Floyd, the daughter of George Floyd, as they attend the funeral service for George Floyd at The Fountain of Praise church in Houston, yesterday. (Photos: AP)

HOUSTON, United States (AP) — George Floyd was lovingly remembered yesterday as Big Floyd — a “gentle giant”, a father and brother, athlete and mentor, and now a force for change — at a funeral for the black man whose death has sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice.

Hundreds of mourners wearing masks against the coronavirus packed a Houston church a little more than two weeks after Floyd was pinned to the pavement by a white Minneapolis police officer who put a knee on his neck for what prosecutors said was 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Cellphone video of the encounter, including Floyd's pleas of “I can't breathe,” ignited protests and scattered violence across the US and around the world, turning the 46-year-old Floyd — a man who in life was little known beyond the public housing project where he was raised in Houston's Third Ward — into a worldwide symbol of injustice.

“Third Ward, Cuney Homes, that's where he was born at,” Floyd's brother, Rodney, told mourners. “But everybody is going to remember him around the world. He is going to change the world.”

The Rev William Lawson, who once marched with the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, said of Floyd: “Out of his death has come a movement, a worldwide movement. But that movement is not going to stop after two weeks, three weeks, a month. That movement is going to change the world.”

Following the funeral, Floyd's body was to be taken by horse-drawn carriage to a cemetery in suburban Pearland, where he was to be laid to rest next to his mother.

“George Floyd was not expendable. This is why we're here,” Democratic Representative Al Green of Houston told the crowd at the Fountain of Praise church. “His crime was that he was born black. That was his only crime. George Floyd deserved the dignity and respect that we accord all people just because they are children of a common God.”