‘His Name is George Floyd’ with Robert Samuels

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

NBCNews

News, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been a little over two years since the tragic murder of George Floyd, and what was arguably the largest civil rights protests in United States history. Since May of 2020, hashtags and icons have been used to commemorate him, but he was so much more than a face on a mural. He was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life, as chronicled in “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” The book builds off of a series in The Washington Post in October 2020 called “George Floyd's America.” Robert Samuels, a national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post, co-wrote the book with colleague Toluse Olorunnipa, a political enterprise and investigations reporter. Samuels joins WITHpod for a personal look at how systemic racism impacted Floyd’s life, his family’s social mobility, his legacy and more. Samuels also discusses how even despite all of the seemingly endless challenges Floyd faced, he still held on to his vision for a better world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A lot of folks who believe that to get by in life, you simply need to get by.
0:06.4	There's not a lot of ambition.
0:08.6	George Floyd wasn't one of those people, though.
0:12.1	From early on, he started telling his sister that he didn't want to rule the world.
0:17.6	He didn't want to change the world, but he wanted to do something to touch the world.
0:22.5	Hello, and welcome to Wise is happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:29.2	It's been a little over two years since the death of George Floyd, a man in Minneapolis,
0:42.0	who was buying something at a store, had the police called on him for possibly passing
0:47.6	a counterfeit 20.
0:49.9	And the police showed up.
0:52.0	And as you know, Derek Chauvin ended up kneeling on George Floyd's neck as a crowd
0:58.8	of onlookers watched and raised alarms and screamed out for help and recorded on their
1:06.1	phones until George Floyd was no longer able to breathe.
1:11.5	As he said, I can't breathe.
1:12.8	I can't breathe.
1:14.4	And ended up dying.
1:15.4	And in the wake of that, the United States saw the largest civil rights protests, racial
1:22.6	justice protests it had seen in over a generation.
1:25.5	And by some metrics ever, if you count participation estimates and the number of people that were
1:30.6	on the streets, you had protests in cities large and small that swept across the country.
1:36.4	You had this moment of to sort of invoke what's become a cliche, a racial reckoning about
1:41.6	the sort of systemic legacy of anti-black racism in America and its intersection with the
	...

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