That's totally a threat and very mafia-esque. It's very similar to a stereotype mafia extortion tactic.

"See, youz need to pay us so we. can. protect. youz! Dis neighborhood ain't safe. Who knows what could happen? To you? Your family? Or to dis property? You never know. One day it might all be gone! We don't want any of that to happen to youz, so just pay us the money and then... there's no problems for you. Capiche?"

 

From the article by The Hill:

Fernando Martinez, owner of La Bodeguita de Mima, on East Market Street, claimed that after a protest closed the street on July 24, demonstrators told him he “better put [the list of demands] on the door so your business is not f---ed with.”

I see this as not necessarily the policy of the “manager”, who said it wasn’t intended as a threat, but those in the protest group, who were not necessarily at the top of the chain of command, doing their own thing. Now Crittenden has to answer. It happens, ask Ellen,

Not one of their better ideas if you ask me.

 

I hate to tell ya but Don Corleone knows everything involving his operation. You go rogue you might find yourself “sleeping with the fish”, lol. No equivalency of the two groups really, but it makes for an entertaining turn of phrase.

There was no mention of any property damage occurring. If a case is being made that the letter being displayed would save them from subsequent property damage, like protection money, I guess, then nothing has been damaged yet. There is nothing more to apologize for except for the fact that the business owners felt threatened and the intent was misunderstood. When everything is said and done, if the demonstrators cause damage now they should be held liable

 

He made his statement. Nobody apologizes anymore, it seems, unless it means a job loss, or becoming a pariah. Now is the time for a “staff meeting” to make sure everyone is on the same page prior to the next protest march. I suppose that’s all you can do considering you don’t know who will show up to the next “event”.

 

I still maintain that what happened to him, should not have happened. It certainly did not look good for the MPD. It sounds like he very well could have died anyway, but we'll never know for sure. And like you said, the police certainly didn't help matters.

But I don't think that he should be seen as a martyr or as a saint. No woman or mother on this planet should be celebrating this man after what he did.

 

You might want to read what this forensic pathologist had to say on the subject.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/working-stiff/86913

Even if the man was a previously convicted felon, the police were charged with taking him into custody, not murdering him.

 

I’m not sure there would be any other conclusion based on newer toxicology reports. The Forensic Pathologist already notes there were drugs in the man’s system. Facts already in evidence at the time this was written.

It also doesn’t matter what other videos are out there as it doesn’t change the fact that Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck, continuing to do so after he became unresponsive. What led up to it is immaterial.

As the author concludes:

The death certificate's "other significant conditions" -- Floyd's natural heart disease and the presence of drugs of abuse in his tested blood -- do not excuse the officers, nor should they cause anyone to blame the victim. They are there on the death certificate because those findings, in the opinion of the medical examiner, would have made his death more likely. They are not the cause of death. The cause of death is police restraint.

I prefer not to sit in judgement of the worth of a man’s life, even if he seems to have been a bad apple.

 

For someone who had a “lethal dose” of illegal drugs in his system, it would seem he was doing just fine until he got a knee to his neck. In his case, the drugs apparently were not as lethal as the knee.

Floyd didn’t gain notoriety because he was a felon but because he was murdered by the police. I’m going to say he was out on the street to begin with because he did the time for his crimes. He could have possibly gone to jail again for passing counterfeit money if he was convicted. People are not rewarding his bad behavior but rising against the heavy handed tactics of modern day police especially against people of color.

It’s only your opinion that our once beautiful cities are now violent garbage dumps as if violence never existed in big cities before the BLM movement. You’re a hoot.

 

Exactly, despite any medical distress he was suffering prior to the knee, we’ll never know if “contributing factors” would have killed him or not. We do know that compression of the neck can lead to death. By doing fine, I meant he was able to walk around committing the deeds you cited. He didn’t keel over from anything he had in his system up until he encountered the police.

Perhaps, if the police had called EMS to assist after the initial complaints about not being able to breathe, the medical personnel could have recognized what was going on and Floyd could have been treated and transported in a manner that would not have resulted in his death.

I’m not conflating anything. George Floyd’s death was the catalyst that sparked the current mass BLM protest movement, not that others such as Colin Kaepernick weren’t previously protesting in their own way. This instance with Floyd seemed to give the movement traction. Some of these protests have had violent interactions on our city streets. Isn’t that what you’ve been bemoaning since it happened? Or has the argument shifted to people with drug problems make our cities unsafe and therefore we’re better off without them?

 

While Floyd's death was the catalyst for the recent protests, part of the reason it was such a trigger is that this is not the first time we've been in this situation. We've had so many other incidents like it, and part of the reason is that Black people have a different experience with law enforcement in general, and aren't treated the same.

That's the larger issue here. People can parse out individual cases. Many of them will deal with people that have a criminal record. And that's what the courts are for. Police shouldn't kill people in the streets because they have counterfeit money or are under the influence of something.

The thing is that you can get lost in the particulars of any single case and miss the larger overriding issue of fairness and equal justice. That's what we've been working for (at glacial speed) since the inception of this country. It's pathetic that it took 100 years for civil rights after the end of slavery. But it's also demonstrates how the job is not done yet, 50+ years from that last point. Some people want to pretend that it is, just as they wanted to ignore the problems that existed in the 60s. But that's human nature, many want to ignore reality because it's uncomfortable.

People that knew John Lewis said that he was still optimistic for America because he believed that good will win out in the end, and people want to do what is right. I used to be in that camp, but the past 4 years or so have worn me down, and I don't feel the same way. The response to the pandemic has been particularly discouraging. But as President Obama said at his eulogy, "he believed in us, even when we don't believe in ourselves."

I hope he was right...