New York's Hurdles To Honoring Eric Garner In 2019

Five years after Eric Garner’s death at the hands of NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, New York City is once again host to a social-media-era circus that struggles bitterly over how to move forward.

In light of Pantaleo’s firing, a surge of online and real-life reactions also show just how little we have learned, as a city and nation, since the summer when Garner was killed outside his Staten Island home. 

In recent weeks, both before and after NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill fired Pantaleo for using a fatal ‘chokehold’ on Garner back in 2014, prominent figures from around the city and country have weighed in on the case, along with millions of everyday US internet users. This includes numerous public statements on the matter from Commissioner O’Neill, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, union leader Pat Lynch of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and various national commentators.

In a nearly 15-minute public statement the day Pantaleo was fired, Commissioner O’Neill expressed empathy for the other officer’s position, and potentially his actions, while Pantaleo was trying to arrest Garner for allegedly selling single cigarettes in a neighborhood which O’Neill said was struggling with substance abuse; among other things, he also said he wished that Garner and Pantaleo had both acted differently, and emphasized in his statement and later on that the decision to fire Pantaleo was very difficult. 

Garner’s daughter Emerald and other family or friends also delivered public statements on Pantaleo’s firing, calling it the correct choice after years of effective inaction from the city; according to O’Neill, the delay largely came from letting the Justice Department go first, though its investigation has ended without civil rights charges. 

Meanwhile, Lynch and others repeatedly and vigorously condemned Pantaleo’s firing in the context of ongoing public criticism toward police tactics and brutality in the US; online, thousands of contributors to a GoFundMe social media campaign for Pantaleo (who plans to sue the NYPD for his job) seemed to agree, thus sparking a petition to end that fundraiser, and a renewed one for the Garner Way Foundation.

Both O’Neill and Mayor de Blasio have since publicly called for Lynch as well as the public generally to (in short) settle down and move on. In return, Garner’s mother Gwen Carr called for both de Blasio and O’Neill to give testimony on the handling of her son’s death, which was ruled a homicide by an NYC coroner; Carr also criticized the one other formal punishment in this matter: the loss of 20 vacation days for supervisor-of-record Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, who reportedly may move out of state.

See also: After NYPD Killing, Neighbors Honor #TheRealSaheed As City Remains Silent

For NYC residents who have followed Garner’s case from the beginning both online and off — and for many millions of others around the world who watched the father of six repeat “I can’t breathe” in a viral cellphone video — the city’s recent steps don’t come close to marking the end of a five-year saga. But the response has been clearly and broadly disturbing.

At best, statements from many local and national leaders downplay the brutality of Garner’s death, and the anguish felt by his family, community, and city over the past five years. At their most blatant, such statements reinforce the mindsets and practices that have led police to kill tens of thousands of people since the year 2000, and consistently disproportionate rates of Black people in particular, making it a leading cause of death for Black men.

They also disregard or just disdain all that occurred and offered meaning in the days, months, and years that came after: how Eric’s daughter Erica Garner-Snipes became internationally known and admired as a passionate advocate for social change, which she shouldered on top of work, young motherhood, and all of her grief; how after Erica suffered two heart attacks and died—at the hospital where she was born 27 years earlier, and not long after her second child Eric arrived—her sister Emerald Snipes-Garner has picked up the torch, and pushed to get the Eric Garner Law, an official chokehold ban, on the books.

How Ramsey Orta, who filmed the gruesome encounter on his phone, has found himself being shuttled between incarceration facilities on minor drug charges ever since, including long periods of solitary confinement; or how New York City, in its practices and often its public representatives, has seemingly achieved none of the kind of real change to which Erica and Emerald have aspired.

As journalist and NYC public-service professional Regina F. Graham reflected this month for MadameNoire, Pantaleo’s firing amounted to “a dream deferred” for Erica, the eldest daughter of Eric Garner.

“She will never know that the man who took her father’s life has now lost his job partly as a result of her tireless work fighting against police brutality,” Graham wrote. Nevertheless, those who survive her are paying close attention, and still need answers—and change.

See also: As Congress Hears Cannabis Testimony, Advocates Form Powerful Coalition For Racial Justice

In a phone interview, Graham said that effectively nothing’s been done so far to remedy the situation that Pantaleo and NYC authorities left behind—nothing of substance, that is, achieved by either the city or by the well-known individuals who have chimed in. “Many high-profile people weighed in on this case as soon as it happened, and weighed in when Erica passed away, and weighed in when the officer was fired. But where are they weighing in to help Ramsey [Orta]? How are they helping him?”

Graham mused, “Someone like Kim Kardashian can get a person out of prison now, so I keep wondering, who’s going to do it—is she going to be the person who finally steps in, if she’s even aware? [Famous] people have been close to the Black Lives Matter movement.” But when it comes to helping Orta, she said, “I hear crickets.”

As a current New Yorker herself, Graham said that the uproar around Pantaleo’s firing has become, like Erica Garner’s tragic death, another hurdle to honoring Eric Garner in 2019 and the years to come. It also stands in the way of systemic change that NYC residents desperately need; the week Pantaleo was fired, for example, NYPD officers were also accused of assaulting partygoers outside the Marcy Houses, near Erica’s former home. 

“Going forward, what does the future look like for people who might be like Eric Garner? How will it end the injustice as Erica hoped, and how long does that change really take?” 

According to Graham, better training for public servants and real support from politicians will be crucial to making such changes happen, for starters. “There needs to be better awareness of Black and other minority cultures, and better understanding,” she said. “I also think officers should be trained to deescalate situations. I don’t think the situation of someone allegedly selling cigarettes should lead to someone’s death; it shouldn’t have been taken that far.”

With regard to the responsibilities and/or failures of city leadership, Graham wasn’t eager to pin individual blame. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that people in [top] positions should lose their jobs or step down,” she said. “But I do think that, in cases like this, these are leaders who are charged with serving the community. They should be meeting regularly with community members and seeing what issues people might be having, how they can provide the community with better service—and not [behaving] so that someone is losing their life over a misdemeanor.”

See also: Black Women Are Besieged On Social Media, And White Apathy Damns Us All

In her article, Graham quotes “an old gospel hymnal” that she used to sing every week at church while growing up in Sacramento, which she’s sure is “still sung in many Black American churches today.” By phone, she described how the church members would stand up and do a march of sorts around the room, singing together: “We are soldiers, in the army, we have to fight, although we have to cry. We have to hold up the bloodstained banner. We have to hold it up until we die.”

As Graham has pointed out, battle and blood are two of the most poignant and apt images tied to the ongoing fight for racial justice, and against police brutality. Both also symbolize the very real damage—emotionally but also physically—that such sorrow can cause: stress and mourning have been linked to heart disease in both younger and older Black women and, among other things, can contribute to a condition known as Broken Heart Syndrome, which affects women in particular.

In addition to bearing “the weight” of work, motherhood, discrimination, and grief, “Erica was also trying to prevent future tragedy. She was a superwoman,” Graham added. “You see something like that a lot with moms, but I don’t know if any body is built to go on like that.”

Indeed, the incredible weight that Erica Garner accepted in her life and the inspiration that she provided have undoubtedly caused various kinds of change for human hearts around the world, including mine.

When I watched Erica speak with growing confidence at public events, and stood in front of her father’s home and her young siblings and then walked through their neighborhood while a police regiment with robo-speakers, canines, and riot gear confronted supporters (successfully scaring most white participants back toward the Staten Island Ferry), and every time I walk past the hospital where Erica died but I still receive care, my chest has ached and ached.

That feeling has continued this month, with accompanying nausea, as I’ve watched and listened to NYC officials and others trying to smooth over recent and years-old events, or to capitalize on them with racist, violent, or simply selfish rallying cries.

And as long as behavior like this remains in our city, the heartache will inevitably continue—and so will the battle for change.