NEW YORK – Monifa Bandele became a community organizer in the late 1990s, after New York City police fatally shot a young, unarmed Black immigrant named Amadou Diallo in the Bronx.
In the two decades since, she repeatedly witnessed police reforms that failed to stop Black people from dying at the hands of officers.
Some of those reforms are now part of federal legislation being negotiated in the name of George Floyd, the Black man whose murder under the knee of a white Minneapolis officer last year sparked worldwide protests.
For instance, the legislation calls for banning chokeholds, a step already taken by New York City prior to the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who in an encounter with the NYPD uttered the same last words as Floyd: “I can’t