The Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder condemn the police killing of Mr. George Floyd. This killing adds to a long list of听听killed by police since 2005, not taking into account acts of police brutality resulting in grievous bodily harm and deaths while in police or sheriff's custody.
Mr. Floyd鈥檚 public murder adds to a spate of police killings of Black people in the past few months of the COVID 19 pandemic. Breonna Taylor was shot in her own bed at home in Louisville Kentucky. Ahmaud Arbery was hunted and killed while jogging in Georgia.听Tony McDade,听a Black transgender man, was killed by officers in Florida. These police killings come at a time where the COVID 19 pandemic is causing much higher rates of death in听Black, Latinx听and tribal communities, especially the Navajo Nation.听We urge our campus community to take note of听听for Black, Latinx, Native and other communities of color.听We also urge public attention to how these acts of violence are racialized and gendered, with Black people in every gender group being disproportionately vulnerable to police violence.
As departments whose work is informed by intersectional antiracist, feminist, queer, and transgender scholarship and activism,听we condemn the ongoing criminalization of black people and the glorification of police violence against black people. We demand justice for the family of Mr. George Floyd and all families who have lost loved ones to racist police violence. We denounce the ongoing onslaught of violence against peaceful protesters in Colorado and across the United States and the world in the wake of this horrific murder.听We call for an end to the increased militarization and funding of police forces and the prison industrial complex, and for states and counties to invest in better schools, job training and empowerment for marginalized communities.