Eskimo Pie and Flavortown?

Credit...

The George Floyd Protests Continue

Since the coincidental viral sharing of the murder of George Floyd of May 25, 2020, and the History Channel's three-day telecast of Grant beginning on May 25, 2020, much has occurred.

The death of Fayetteville-born George Floyd exposed widespread police brutality in the US. Footage of the tear gassing of peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square were shared as hundreds of American cities were rocked by protests, uprisings, and demonstrations.

#BlackLivesMatter, in the wake of Floyd's "I Can't Breathe" killing, was re-born.

Trump's "plan" to hold his first rally in Tulsa was changed, and social change kept happening.

Corporate America, in the wake of their awakenings overnight from June 16 to June 17, 2020, said "Goodbye to Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Cream of Wheat's Rastus," Mrs. Butterworth's, and more.

Citing the “horrific racist imagery associated with the phrase,” the University of Florida will no longer use the popular “Gator Bait” chant during athletic events, school president Kent Fuchs announced on Thursday, June 18, 2020. There are numerous references that have cited that African American babies were used as alligator bait.

And finally, on June 19, 2020, Dreyer's announced that it would change the "Eskimo Pie" brand name and marketing, saying the term is "derogatory." Eskimo pies were the brand name of a vanilla ice cream product dipped in chocolate. "Eskimo" has been criticized as a racist name for Arctic indigenous peoples such as the Inuit and Yupik.

Statues Topple Around the World

On Sunday, June 7, 2020, slave trader Edward Colston's statue in Bristol, England, was torn down and thrown into the harbor during a second day of anti-racism protests across the UK. Colston was a member of the Royal African Company, which transported about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. On his death in 1721, he bequeathed his wealth to charities and his legacy can still be seen on Bristol's streets, memorials and buildings, the British media noted.

A protester knelt on the neck of the Colston statue to mirror the Floyd murder.

Statues of Confederate generals and soldiers were removed officially or by crowds of activists, coast to coast. Then around the globe, demonstrators and protesters began to take down slavery suppliers, colonial figures, and other statues and monuments representing repression. 

A shift in the US from specifically just Confederate statues to others that stood for colonialism appeared to center on Juneteenth, June 19, 2020. The last most significant demonstration on Juneteenth, was the toppling and symbolic burning of the Albert Pike statue in Washington D.C. Although Pike was a Brigadier General in the Confederacy, and was the only outside statue in D.C. of a Confederate, that statue was not dedicated to his role in the Civil War. Pike as an influential figure in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, was the reason for the statue. Pike strong ties in the Masonic tradition may have save the statue in the past, but the figure toppled in 15 minutes on Juneteenth 2020.

Running tallies of the "statues across the toppled..." are here, here, here, and here.

Statues fell, flags with Confederate symbols came down, portraits of house speakers who served in the Confederacy were removed from the U.S. Congress. Venerable brands, which have long used labels such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s, announced an end to faces on food boxes and bottles that were born in racist stereotypes. Longtime companies that worked with slavers and profited from them, such as Lloyds’ of London, apologized to the Black community and promised to make amends.
Are these moves, prompted by the nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd and so many others, just the leading edge of overdue changes in America and abroad? ~ National Geographic June 22, 2020.

Other statues beyond those of the Confederacy also were toppled.

San Francisco's Christopher Columbus stands near the Coit Tower.

Christopher Columbus statues were beheaded in Boston on June 10.  On June 10, in Richmond, Virginia, a statue of Christopher Columbus was taken down and thrown into a nearby lake. Protesters in Miami vandalized the statues of Christopher Columbus and Juan Ponce de Leon on June 10, spray painting a hammer and sickle, Black Lives Matter fists and more. Miami Police arrested seven suspects. Also on June 10, protesters tore down a statue of Columbus outside the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. In Pittsburgh, a statue of Christopher Columbus was vandalized on June 12. It was reportedly vandalized multiple times before the recent protests. In Providence, Rhode Island, a school teacher and two others were arrested after they allegedly vandalized a statue of Columbus on June 13. California state lawmakers announced on June 17 that statues of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella would be removed from the Capitol rotunda.

The George Washington statue in Washington Park, Chicago, was found vandalized on June 14. The statue could be seen spray painted, and it had a white hood placed on its head.

In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park along the Pacific Ocean, protesters sprayed red paint and wrote "slave owner" on pedestals before using ropes to bring down the statues and drag them down grassy slopes amid cheers and applause.
The statues targeted included a bust of Ulysses Grant, who was the U.S. president after he was the general who finally beat the Confederates and ended the Civil War.
Protesters pointed out that Grant and his family owned slaves. He married into a slave-owning family, but he had no problem fighting to end slavery. [Left out is that Grant freed his "inherited" due to marriage slave and was raised in an abolition family who disapproved of slavery. Source: Grant History series.]
Also torn down in the San Francisco park was a statue of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the U.S. national anthem "Star Spangled Banner." Key owned slaves. Source.

Other developments

“The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice,” said Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the 26th president, said in a statement approving the removal of the Teddy Roosevelt statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

 According to the New York Times:

The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American man and an African man, which has presided over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1940, is coming down.
The decision, proposed by the museum and agreed to by New York City, which owns the building and property, came after years of objections from activists and at a time when the killing of George Floyd has initiated an urgent nationwide conversation about racism.
For many, the equestrian statue at the museum’s Central Park West entrance has come to symbolize a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination.

Columbus, Ohio's Columbus statue.

According to CNN:

The city of Columbus, Ohio, has already vowed to bring down its statue of Christopher Columbus. 

But thousands are hoping to erase the city's connection to Columbus' legacy even further by renaming it Flavortown in honor of Columbus native Guy Fieri.

This is not a joke.

Food Channel's Guy Fieri

The main proponent of these Columbus moves is 32-year-old Mayor Andrew J. Ginther.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, while a Washington statue was pulled down in Portland, Seattle's Lenin statue remains. The Statue of Lenin in Seattle, a 16 ft tall bronze statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, by Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov, is the focus of questions about why it still stands.

Fayette Factor: Buffalo

The Fayette Factor 2020 marches on.

Early on the morning of Friday, June 4, 2020, I tweeted notice of the significant "on this date" 195th anniversary of the naming of Lafayette Square in Buffalo. I noted the link, "George Floyd and the Fayette Factor: Fayetteville to Lafayette Square, from June 2, 2020, in my tweet.

Buffalo Incident

Lafayette Square is laid out in Joseph Ellicott's Buffalo city plan. The square is located three blocks east of Niagara Square and is the second most important space in downtown Buffalo. In 1825 American Revolutionary War veteran and French General Lafayette visited this square during his historic tour of the United States and gave a speech in the square. He spoke on a platform in front of the Eagle Tavern, a highly regarded hotel in its day, on June 4 as part of ceremonies to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war. 

That same year, 1825, Buffalo carried out its last official public hanging when brothers Israel, Isaac and Nelson Thayer were hanged for murdering John Love, which some accounts say occurred in the square, while others say it was at Niagara Square. 

June 4 would turn out to be an important date for Buffalo in terms of the nationwide demonstrations.

On June 4, 2020, during the George Floyd protests in New York state, a curfew began in Buffalo, and police formed lines to sweep through the area.
At the Niagara Square, two Buffalo police officers shoved a 75-year old man who approached them. The man stumbled backwards and fell. The back of his head hit the pavement, knocking him unconscious, as blood flowed from his head. Nearby police appeared to walk past the injured man. The victim was taken to a hospital in serious condition where he was treated for a concussion and laceration.
The department issued an initial statement claiming that during a "skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell". Video of the incident was uploaded to Twitter and quickly became viral.
Police Commissioner Bryan Lockwood suspended two police officers without pay, and Mayor Byron Brown initiated an investigation.
As a result of the suspensions of the two officers, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, a police union, expressed its displeasure by declaring on June 5 that it would not pay any legal fees to defend any other Buffalo police officers for incidents related to the protests. The police union's president claimed that the suspended officers "were simply following orders" and "simply doing their job", while also saying that the victim "did slip".
All 57 police officers from the Emergency Response Team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department. According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers. Source notes citations.

Niagara Square is located three blocks from Lafayette Square, Buffalo, New York.

The Lafayette Square Photo Op

Police, military police, park police, and rangers clear out the peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square, for the photo op walk and Bible posing.

The Buffalo incident followed the widely discussed and photographed events at Lafayette Park/Square in Washington D.C. 

On June 1, 2020, President Trump went to the historic St. John's Episcopal Church, whose basement had been damaged by fire, and posed for pictures in front of it holding up a Bible. To clear the route so that he could walk there, police and national guardsmen had used tearing agents in smoke devices (perhaps "tear gas"), rubber bullets, and flash grenades to clear a crowd of peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, resulting in significant news coverage and denunciation by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

See also, "The battle of Lafayette Square and the undermining of American democracy," Robert Kagan, Saturday, June 6, 2020, Brookings Press.

As of June 7, 2020, at least 19 people have died during the protests. Sixteen of the casualties died of gunshot wounds. Wikipedia is keeping a running total of deaths and injuries to the protestors, here.

George Floyd and the Fayette Factor: Fayetteville to Lafayette Square

George Perry Floyd (Oct 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020, age 46) was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Over 140 cities were impacted by the demonstrations and uprisings coming in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, May 25, 2020.  See "George Floyd: Syncs, Coincidences, and Name Games" for more.

One location was Market House, Fayetteville, North Carolina, built in 1832, and was formally used as a site to sell slaves. It was set on fire on May 31, 2020. 

On June 1, 2020, there was a peaceful Floyd-related protest in Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C.  This occurred right as President Donald J. Trump gave a speech in the Rose Garden where he said, "I'm an ally to peaceful protestors."At the same time, the US Park Police and Secret Service, under orders from Trump, pushed the protesters out of the way with their shields, used smoke bombs, flash-bang shells, and rubber bullets to clear a path for Trump to walk across the street to St. John's Episcopal Church for a 7:04 minute photo op with him holding up a Bible.

Lafayette Park/Lafayette Square

Planned as part of the pleasure grounds surrounding the Executive Mansion, this square was originally part of "President's Park", which is the larger National Park Service unit that also includes the White House grounds, The Ellipse, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and grounds and the Treasury Building and grounds. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson had Pennsylvania Avenue cut through that park, separating what would become Lafayette Square from the White House grounds. In 1824, the park was officially renamed in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general whose involvement was indispensable in securing victory in the American Revolutionary War.

Why was the park renamed in 1824? The year is significant as the year of Lafayette's grand Masonic tour of America. The Marquis de Lafayette was the last surviving French general of the American Revolutionary War in 1824, and he made a tour of the 24 states in the United States from July 1824 to September 1825. He was received by the populace with a hero's welcome at many stops, and many honors and monuments were presented to commemorate and memorialize the visit. Lafayette was only nineteen years old when entering America with no combat experience.

Lafayette laying cornerstone of Bunker Hill Monument June 17, 1825.

New York, Boston, and Philadelphia did their best to outdo each other in the celebrations honoring Lafayette. Philadelphia renovated the Old State House (today Independence Hall) which might otherwise have been torn down, because they needed a location for a reception to him. Until that point, it had not been usual in the United States to build monuments, but Lafayette's visit set off a wave of construction—usually with him laying the cornerstone himself, in his capacity as mason. The arts benefited by his visit, as well, as many cities commissioned portraits for their civic buildings, and the likenesses were seen on innumerable souvenirs. Lafayette had intended to visit only the original 13 states during a four-month visit, but the stay stretched to 16 months as he visited all 24 states.

The towns and cities that he visited gave him enthusiastic welcomes, including Fayetteville, North Carolina, the first city named in his honor. Source.

 

 

President Andrew Jackson statue.

Lafayette Square has been used as a racetrack, a graveyard, a zoo, a slave market, an encampment for soldiers during the War of 1812, and many political protests and celebrations. In 1851, Andrew Jackson Downing landscaped Lafayette Square in the picturesque style. On February 27, 1859 Representative Daniel Sickles killed Philip Barton Key II in Lafayette Square. Key had come to the park for an assignation with Sickles' wife, only to be discovered and killed by the congressman.

Major General Comte Jean de Rochambeau statue.

Major General Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette statue.

Today's plan, with its five large statues, dates from the 1930s. In the center stands Clark Mills' equestrian statue of President Andrew Jackson, erected in 1853. In the four corners are statues of foreign Revolutionary War heroes: Major General Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette and Major General Comte Jean de Rochambeau of France, Brigadier General Thaddeus Kosciuszko of Poland, and Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben of Prussia. Source: Wikipedia.

The Fayette Factor

The Fayette Factor, as I characterize it, was first documented by researcher and writer William Grimstad back in 1977. Grimstad wrote about the Fayette concept in an article entitled "Fateful Fayette," Fortean Times, No. 25, Spring 1978, and in his two books - Weird America and The Rebirth of Pan - credited as being authored by "Jim Brandon," who we know as Bill Grimstad. In all editions of Mysterious America (1983 through 2007), you will find added material on the "Fayette" name game.

The "Fayette Factor" is a phrase capturing the surprisingly high numbers of Fortean or inexplicable events, violent incidents, and synchromystic findings linked to places named after one of the USA's Founding Fathers--Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834).

The word "fay" + "ette" = "fairy" + "little" = little little people.

Lafayette can also be translated from the French as "the little enchantment," as well as "the little fairy." Joan of Arc at the age of 8 danced around a "fay tree," a "fairy tree," some saying she saw fairies (which links to the French surname from Occitan, "the little beech tree"). Others tell that she heard voices, had visions, and was "enchanted."

The cities, towns, and counties across the United States, which are the hotspots linked to the Fayette Factor, are tied to the renamed Masonic lodges and affiliated sites that the Marquis de Lafayette visited on his grand tour of the country in 1824-1825. His visits were highly ritualized happenings, in which he was involved with laying many cornerstones. 

For a list of all the postings on "Twilight Language" related to the Fayette Factor, see here.

All three books deal with the "Fayette Factor" and the "Name Game."

For autographed copies of Mysterious America, click on the title.

George Floyd: Syncs, Coincidences, and Name Games

Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant, center, and his teammates warm up before an NBA basketball game against the Sacramento Kings, Tuesday, December 9, 2014, in Los Angeles. Several athletes have worn “I Can’t Breathe” shirts during warm ups in support of the family of Eric Garner, who died July 17, 2014, after a police officer placed him in a chokehold when he was being arrested for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

LeBron James (above) and Kyrie Irving (below) showed solidarity with people protesting the Staten Island Grand Jury decision not to indict the police office who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold on July 17, 2014, donning a black t-shirt with Garner's last words (on Monday, December 8, 2014).

Divided House

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered an important speech to 1000 delegates at the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention. The Republicans of that time were the party of the North, of the abolitionists, and of the "all people are created equal" point of view.

In Lincoln's speech, he uttered the memorable lines:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

The title, "House Divided Speech," reflects part of the speech's introduction, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," a concept familiar to Lincoln's audience as a statement by Jesus recorded in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). Source.

In Abe Lincoln in Illinois, John Brown, comforts his dying son at Harper's Ferry, as he is arrested by Robert E. Lee. Brown was played by John Cromwell, the director of the film.

I watched Raymond Massey's Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) in the wake of having viewed the three-night History Channel's mini-series Grant this week (May 25-27, 2020).  Massey's tour-de-force performance as Lincoln shows him struggling with the decision to fight slavery. Grant does equally well demonstrating the pre-Civil War Grant grappling with the fact he finds he owns a slave he inherited because he married into a slave-owning family. "Timely" seems the least I can say about both of these docudramas based on a legacy of slavery in the USA that continues in today's events.

As reviewer Nick Schager points out:

Grant is an active attempt to rehabilitate the historical record, positing Confederate adversary Robert E. Lee as a symbol of the intolerant, aristocratic, treasonous old guard, and Grant as an emblem of a more open, just, unified modern America. Grant’s disgust for the Confederacy and the rancidness it stood for is on full display throughout this series, which pointedly contends that—good ol’ boy revisionism be damned—it was slavery, not simply the more euphemistic “states’ rights,” which drove the South to secede and take up arms against the Union. At the same time, Grant’s compassion and levelheadedness also remains front and center, epitomized by the lenient terms of surrender he ultimately offered to the defeated Lee, which helped him secure support throughout the South in the years following the end of the war.

George Floyd is Killed

The Incident: A Summary

The death of George Floyd occurred on May 25, 2020, when Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, kneeled on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, with 2 minutes and 53 seconds of that occurring after Floyd was unresponsive, according to the criminal complaint filed against Chauvin. Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the road, while Chauvin had his knee on his neck.

The incident occurred during Floyd's arrest in Powderhorn, a neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was recorded on cell phone video by several bystanders. The arrest was conducted after Floyd, an African-American, [shortly after 8:00 pm] attempted to use a $20 bill that a grocery store employee identified as counterfeit. Police alleged that Floyd "physically resisted" after being ordered to exit his vehicle, a claim that has been contradicted by available video recordings. The video recordings of the arrest, showing Floyd repeatedly saying "I can't breathe", were widely circulated on social media platforms and broadcast by the media.
The four officers involved were fired the next day. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is conducting a federal civil rights investigation into the incident at the request of the Minneapolis Police Department. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is also investigating possible violations of Minnesota statutes. On May 29, Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter for Floyd's death, with Hennepin County attorney Michael O. Freeman saying he anticipated charges to be brought against the other three officers at the scene of Floyd's death.
After Floyd's death, demonstrations and protests in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area were initially peaceful on May 26, but later that day turned destructive as windows were smashed at a police precinct, two stores were set on fire, and many stores were looted and damaged. Some demonstrators skirmished with law enforcement officers, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Source.

Videos Record Floyd's Death 

Part of the arrest was recorded by a bystander and streamed to Facebook Live, which went viral.
When the video starts, Floyd is already pinned chest down to the ground, and Officer Chauvin is kneeling on his neck. Floyd repeatedly tells Chauvin "Please" and "I can't breathe", while also moaning, groaning, and sobbing. A bystander tells police, "You got him down. Let him breathe."
Another bystander says, "One of my homies died the same way", and after Floyd responds "I'm about to die the same", Chauvin tells Floyd to relax.  The police ask Floyd, "What do you want?" Floyd answers, "I can't breathe." Floyd states: "Please, the knee in my neck, I can't breathe." Someone tells Floyd to "get up and get in the car" (which Agence France Presse, CBS News and WVLT-TV identify as one of the officers, while Buzzfeed News says it is "unclear" whether it was an officer speaking), to which Floyd replies, "I will ... I can't move." Floyd cries out, "Mama!" Floyd says, "My stomach hurts, my neck hurts, everything hurts", and requests water. The police do not audibly respond to Floyd. Floyd begs, "Don't kill me."
One bystander points out that Floyd is bleeding from the nose. Another tells the police that Floyd is "not even resisting arrest right now". The police tell the bystanders that Floyd was "talking, he's fine"; a bystander replies that Floyd "ain't fine". The bystander protests that the police were preventing Floyd from breathing, urging them, "Get him off the ground ... You could have put him in the car by now. He's not resisting arrest or nothing. You're enjoying it. Look at you. Your body language."
Floyd goes silent and motionless, but Chauvin does not lift his knee from Floyd's neck. The bystanders protest that Floyd is "not responsive", and repeatedly ask the police to check Floyd's pulse.  A bystander questions, "Did they f*cking kill him?"
An ambulance eventually arrives, and Chauvin does not move his knee until emergency medical services put Floyd's unresponsive body on a stretcher. Floyd was initially found pulseless by HCMC paramedics, but CPR was not initiated by the paramedic crew. Floyd is loaded into the ambulance and taken away to 36th Street and Park Avenue, according to an incident report by the Minneapolis Fire Department. A male bystander says that the police "just really killed" Floyd. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for at least seven minutes, including around four minutes after Floyd stopped moving.
Medics in the ambulance checked Floyd's pulse several times, but found none. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Source.

"I Can't Breathe"

Floyd's death has been compared to the 2014 death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who also repeated "I can't breathe" eleven times after being placed in a choke hold by a New York police officer during an arrest.

On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner died in the New York City borough of Staten Island after Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, put him in a chokehold while arresting him. Video footage of the incident generated widespread national attention and raised questions about the appropriate use of force by law enforcement.

Syncs, Coincidences, and the Name Game

As the George Floyd incident unfolded, I was sent or directed to various "twilight language" segments of the event and the people surrounding it.

George Floyd Name Game

From Greek, the meaning of the name George is from georgos meaning tiller of the soil, or farmer. Famous bearer: St George, patron saint of England, who struggled with a fire breathing dragon symbolizing the devil.
The name Floyd means gray or gray-haired, and is of English origin, from a Welsh byname, llwyd. Floyd is from Lloyd, a name originating with the Welsh adjective llwyd, most often understood as meaning "grey" but with other meanings as well.

Floyd and Coronavirus

 A widely circulated photograph of George Floyd at his job as a security guard shows him next to a poster of Corona beer. Floyd was laid off due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Kobe Bryant

"I can't breathe" was a slogan that Kobe Bryant began using in 2014, due to the Garner episode. Bryant was able to convince his teammates to all wear "I can't breathe" teeshirts. 

Both George Floyd and Kobe Bryant were successful basketball players in their own tiers, and about the same height. Floyd was 6 feet, 7 inches in height. Kobe Bryant was 6 feet, 6 inches tall.

Bryant died on January 26, 2020. Floyd died on May 25, 2020, almost exactly five months later, and one day after his birthday.

Kobe Bryant, 41, died with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, in the helicopter crash. George Floyd, 46, is survived by two daughters, one is 6-year-old Gianna. 

Chauvin Name Game

 

The police officer's name who is seen in the video with his knee on George Floyd's neck is Derek Chauvin. The roots of Chauvin are the same as for chauvinist. Chauvin's meaning is derived from the French diminutive of Chauve, a nickname for "a bald man," from Old French chauf "bald" (Latin calvus).

Derek Michael Chauvin, a 44-year-old Caucasian man, had been an officer in the Minneapolis Police Department since around 2001. Chauvin had 18 complaints on his official record, two of which ended in discipline from the department including official letters of reprimand. He had been involved in three police shootings, one of which was fatal.

Floyd and Chauvin Both Worked As Security Guards at El Nuevo Rodeo 

A bizarre twist in the murder of George Floyd was reported on Thursday night, as a former club owner in south Minneapolis revealed that Floyd worked at her club as a security guard, alongside recently fired police officer Derek Chauvin, the man who killed him.
Club owner Maya Santamaria says that the two both worked the same security shift at El Nuevo Rodeo club on Lake Street, before the business was sold a few months ago.
“Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open. They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside,” Santamaria told KSTP.
However, Santamaria said that she can’t be certain that Chauvin and Floyd knew each other, because often over a dozen security guards working at the club on any given night.
Still, they did work overlapping shifts, and the fact that one man ended up killing the other should justify further investigation into whether or not the two had a prior relationship.
If Chauvin and Floyd were not meeting for the first time in the moments before Floyd’s death, that could potentially mean that there was a deeper motive behind the murder. Source.

Floyd and Chauvin both worked as security guards and had overlapping shifts at the Latin nightclub, El Nuevo Rodeo. Owner Maya Santamaria said Chauvin had worked there for 17 years and Floyd had worked at about a dozen events. She said it was not clear if they knew each other but that she did not believe so. Santamaria described Chauvin as using overly aggressive tactics in her club, which she had asked him to tone down. Source.

Dakota syncs?

Synchromystic Ed Lin is working on research of "Minneapolis (Longtitude W 93 Thelema) where the Floyd riots began on May 26, 2020 and the history of the Twin Cities (11), which told of the mass execution (38 / 11 lynched in one day) and expulsion of Dakota Sioux Indians who spoke Dakota dialect. Then suddenly I saw a new article about new photos surfaced around the time John Lennon met his killer Mark David Chapman in front of the Dakota Building (where Rosemary's Baby was shot). Trying to connect the current situation with the Native American curse (The Shining / Dakota oil pipeline that ends in Stanley)." Source: Kitchen Sync Facebook.

See "Dakota" here at Twilight Language, August 3, 2011.

This souvenir building replica of the Dakota is produced by InFocusTech. 

Freeman

Michael Orville Freeman (born May 7, 1948) is an American attorney and politician from the state of Minnesota. He is currently the county attorney for Hennepin County, the most populous county in the state, of which the county seat is Minneapolis, and the person in charge of investigating the police officers involved with George Floyd's death...He is the son of Orville Freeman, who was a former Minnesota governor and Secretary of Agriculture under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Source.

In July 1960, Orville Freeman (Michael's father) nominated U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts for president at the Democratic National Convention.

By coincidence, "Freeman" was a surname taken by freed slaves, before and after 1863's Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.

See also:

George Floyd and the Fayette Factor: Fayetteville to Lafayette Square (June 2, 2020).

Fayette Factor: Buffalo (June 7, 2020).

Take Heed on June 17 (June 8, 2020).

+++

Update

June 10, 2020

Matthew Bell has posted an extension of several of the themes above and more here: "The Strange Case of Jekyll and Floyd."

Also, Bell passes along the following:

(1) The February 23, 2020 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery occurred in Brunswick, Georgia right across from... Jekyll Island -- and just north of the "Floyd's Neck" location I identified in the video.

(2) Arbery had apparently been jogging on Holmes Road. Of course, in 2012, you extensively covered James Holmes, the man convicted of murdering 12 people and wounding 70 at the Aurora, Colorado Century 16 theater at the premier of... you'll recall... the Dark Knight Rises.

(3) And, unless my map is mistaken, Holmes Rd. is just south of the Jekyll Island Causeway, designated U.S. Route 17 -- which seems to fit into the Nicolas-Chauvin / Derek-Chauvin "17" numerical pattern.

(Possible secondary addition: U.S 17 apparently also connects up the State Route (SR) 520 just East of I-95. 520 is 6 short from the number of seconds in 8 minutes, 46 seconds, i.e., 526.)