Eric Garner’s dying declaration, “I can’t breathe,” was repeated 11 times on a Staten Island sidewalk. His utterances were muffled by an NYPD officer’s chokehold around his neck.
But the words, immortalized in an onlooker’s cell phone video, continue to echo across New York City and the globe as the 10-year anniversary of his killing approaches.
Chants of “I can’t breathe” still sound in protests against police violence and racial injustice around the world – just as they did that summer a decade ago. The words have graced presidents’ lips, the backs of athletes’ jerseys, and even show up on stage. A Lincoln Center event Friday remembering Garner features a 75-person choir, in a “project that gathers us together as co-conspirators – to breathe and keep breathing any way we can.”
Despite those continuing reverberations, some Black scholars, police reformers and civil rights activists are disappointed there hasn’t been more progress. They count Garner’s death — among a string of police killings of unarmed Black men that came in quick succession – as a catalyst for the reform movement that gave rise to Black Lives Matter, a cause they see as stalled.
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