George Floyd.
By now, surely everyone has heard that name.
Throughout the US, demonstrators have for weeks been protesting police brutality. Although largely peaceful, some riots and looting have spilled out into the streets, with ensuing chaos resulting in casualties on both sides.
Naturally, some unscrupulous people will — sure as the sun rise — shamelessly attempt deflect away from the grave issue of police brutality by portraying Floyd as a vicious thug who somehow deserved his horrible fate at the hands of a merciless and honourless officer.
But whatever the man's prior history, police in Minneapolis were at the time of the arrest only responding to a report of fraud, a fake $20 bill.
Floyd was certainly not a dangerous felon robbing a bank and taking hostages, or some big bad scary cartel ring leader running a drug and human trafficking ring.
He was someone's husband, father, brother, son, friend.
He was, above all, a human being.
And he was killed as he desperately plead for his life while bystanders incredulously watched horrified as three officers stood idly by doing absolutely nothing to intervene.
The still images from video that captures the last moments of Floyd's life — as he for the better part of nine minutes lay handcuffed, face down in the asphalt with an officer's knee dug deep in the back of his neck as he desperately begged for breath — are chilling.
"I can't breathe!" he struggled to say, several times.
The same words were gasped in the dying breaths of Eric Garner, who in 2014 was killed under nearly identical circumstances in New York City. Garner was also unarmed, and faced petty charges of selling smuggled cigarettes. Hardly an Al Capone or a Pablo Escobar worthy of such a ruthless escalation of deadly force.
Seeing history repeat itself ad nauseam nearly verbatim like a broken record almost gives one the impression that we collectively stubbornly refuse to correct past mistakes and grievous injustice.
But maybe not this time.
Now, as perhaps the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, people are mobilizing in cities across the US, looting as well as burning businesses and even a police station.
Yet videos also surfaced of lone agitators appearing out of nowhere, their identities totally concealed as they nonchalantly smash a few windows and destroy property before disappearing as quickly as they arrived.
Violence cannot be condoned, but the anguish and anger of demonstrators is justified. Property can be replaced, lives taken in cold blood are gone forever.
The movement has even spread across the Atlantic, with demonstrators inspired by US protestors taking to the streets in France, the UK and even in Canada, where rallies have been mostly peaceful.
(A rally in the Town of Innisfail, Alberta, attended by several hundred anti-racism demonstrators)
The public outcry is understandable.
Crushing someone's neck with a knee for such a long time on a suspect who had been subdued and even gone completely unresponsive is, at best, gross negligence in the course of duty. At worst, a sadistic indifference towards life.
The four officers involved in the unnecessarily forceful and subsequently fatal arrest were fired. The one who used his knee to snuff the life from a man begging to breath and not die, has been charged with murder. The other three were — eventually — also charged with abetting.
One Tennessee police chief even denounced the officers' actions, and went a step further calling out any and all sympathizers.
"If you wear a badge and you don’t have an issue with this...turn it in," Chief David Roddy posted on social media to his great credit.
But this is another tragic element to this story.
The work and reputation of good police who strive to set an example is tarnished. Trust is difficult enough to establish, and even harder yet to repair. People who might once have turned to an officer of the law for help now look upon them with fearful, suspicious eyes.
And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Let's be honest with ourselves.
If this nightmare had not been video recorded for the world to plainly see with their own eyes, faced only with a he-said, she-said account of the circumstances, the officers at best would have been dismissed with full pay and pension. At worst, they would have been slapped on the wrist and thrown back into active duty rotation to continue to "serve and protect."
How many other Floyds didn't have a crowd equipped with smart phones?
Of course rioters will be scapegoated as hooligans and criminals for burning down a few buildings. But meanwhile, the billionaire oligarchs who have carved up the country for themselves will continue to laugh as they perpetuate the actual looting and plundering of the nation.
And until all the good cops start to expose the bad ones, the situation will not improve with mere Band-Aid remedies, pretty photo ops, and political platitudes from politicians who benefit from the status quo.
Perhaps Malcolm X best illustrated the situation, which sadly seems to have changed all too little since the civil rights movement he influenced decades ago.
"That's not a chip on my shoulder," said the controversial civil rights era leader, who unlike his contemporary, MLK Jr., did not condemn violent civil disobedience in the face of gross injustice.
"That's your foot on my neck."
Sadly, that's something men like Floyd and Garner came to know all too personally well in their final tragic, and what must have been horrifying, last moments on Earth.