The summer of 2014 changed Shaun King\u2019s life forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was during that tumultuous summer that a national awakening occurred; in no small part due to King. And all because he figured out how to take a video off of YouTube and upload it the Facebook. The rest, they say, is history \u2013 fitting for King, a former history teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That video King uploaded was one he was reluctant to even watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was working as the director of communication for Global Green, a nonprofit in California, and I got a call from a friend who told me there was a video on YouTube I had to see,\u201d recalled King, speaking Oct. 23 to the audience at the Machine Shop in Minneapolis during Pillsbury United\u2019s Greater>Together fundraiser. \u201cThe video was of a man being choked by a police officer who came up from behind the man and you can hear the man saying, \u2018I can\u2019t breathe.\u2019 I was literally watching a man die before my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That man was Eric Garner. And if it were not for King sharing the video to Facebook, which then went viral, Garner might well have been one of the many to die at the hands of police without raising the community\u2019s ire. To put \u201cmany\u201d in perspective, in 2014 more than 1,100 people in the U.S. were killed by police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
King recalled that while fighting for justice for Garner it was just a few weeks later that John Crawford, III was killed in an Ohio Walmart while looking at a toy gun on a store shelf. Four days after Crawford it was Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The killings began to consume King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt really took over my life,\u201d said King. \u201cWithin a month I quit my job. I was consumed with getting justice for these victims and their families. And while we were organizing, a 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed, and I made a mistake. I promised I would get justice for Tamir.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rice, also in Ohio, was killed by police who rolled up on the child and immediately shot the kid, who was holding a toy gun. The district attorney declined to prosecute the officer, Timothy Loehmann, who shot Rice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI told the family (of Rice) we would get justice \u2026 I really believed it,\u201d said a somber King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of the more than 1,100 killed by police in the U.S. that year, not one was successfully prosecuted. Most never faced charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot a single family got justice \u2026 not one,\u201d said King, who said he went into a period of deep depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What pulled King out of that depression was his love for history. In particular, a single history course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m in a history class and I open a book to the picture of a man, Leopold von Ranke, the father of scientific history. Von Ranke had a theory that if you look at history in chronological order you would see a steady progression of humanity, but what he found was there was a steady progression of technology, but humanity went in ebbs and flows,\u201d said King, offering the audience a master\u2019s level history lesson. \u201cVon Ranke then asked, \u2018What happens when we get to the peak of technology but the bottom of humanity?\u2019 I suggest to you that in some ways that\u2019s where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kings comments came a day before at least six bombs were sent to several prominent targets of President Donald Trump\u2019s rhetoric, including the residence of President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, the residence of President Bill Clinton and 2016 presidential foe, Hillary Clinton, two to the D.C. and Los Angeles offices of Rep. Maxine Waters and one to CNN, a constant punching bag for Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI believe we are currently in a dip in humanity and it was easy to get in this dip, but it\u2019s pretty damn hard to get out of it,\u201d warned King. \u201cFor example, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a dip in humanity and that was a 300-year dip.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
King said to get out of this dip people need to be both energized and organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can be fully energized, but if you\u2019re not organized it won\u2019t matter,\u201d said King. \u201cThere must be a plan that is as sophisticated and comprehensive as the problem itself. The analogy I use is, if your house is on fire it\u2019s a bad time to be talking about fire department policy. That\u2019s a conversation that needs to happen well before the fire. We are experts in the problem, but amateurs in the plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to King, part of the plan is funding. The racial justice fighter praised the work of Pillsbury United and called on the audience to further fund the organization to advance its mission. Greater>Together is in its second year and is one of Pillsbury United\u2019s largest private donor events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The summer of 2014 changed Shaun King\u2019s life forever. It was during that tumultuous summer that a national awakening occurred; in no small part due to King. And all because he figured out how to take a video off of YouTube and upload it the Facebook. The rest, they say, is history \u2013 fitting for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1403,2776,1416],"class_list":["post-4437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-world","tag-eric-garner","tag-global-green","tag-shaun-king","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Insight-News-Website-Images-23.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4438,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4437\/revisions\/4438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}