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Florida Pastor Jogs While Carrying A TV To Make A Powerful Point About The Ahmaud Arbery Shooting
A White man in Florida ran over two miles through a residential neighborhood with a flat screen TV in hand.
He faced no difficulties whatsoever.
He posted his undisturbed run to prove Ahmaud Arbery was harassed and killed while jogging because he was Black.
Like many others across the internet, the Ahmaud Arbery shooting outraged Richard Demsik enough to express his anger online. The former pastor from Vero Beach, Florida made his statement in the form of a brief TikTok video.
In his selfie video, Demsik jogged shirtless and wore his hat backwards, just as 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery did only one state north in Georgia on February 23. Arbery, however, was chased and fatally shot by a father and son in the middle of his jog.
Arbery's killers, Gregory and Travis McMichael, who have been arrested and charged with aggravated assault and murder, claimed they thought Arbery, a Black man carrying nothing, was a burglar.
To drive his point home, Demsik, a White man, added one additional prop to his jogging getup—a flat screen TV.
At the end of the video, Demsik tempted fate.
"Someone's gonna stop me now for sure. Because if not....what was the problem with Ahmaud?"
Demsik spoke with Insider about his outrage over Arbery's untimely death and his decision to say something.
"I just started crying when I just saw this poor young man running—as I have thousands of times in my life—get shot down."
"Maybe I should run with a TV to show that being a suspicious character isn't enough that someone should be shot down. Being a White person, that's just not going to happen to me."
Demsik went on to tell Insider that his 2.23 mile jog, carrying a TV, brought about no trouble from the neighbors. Not a soul bothered him, as he put it.
True to Demsik's point, the video certainly managed to get a conversation going.
Several people on Twitter expressed appreciation for Demsik and took a moment to elaborate even more on the racism behind Arbery's murder.
The case against the McMichaels, the father and son who chased down then shot and killed Arbery, is now being managed by four District Attorneys.
Clearly, the Georgia legal system is aware that millions, like Demsik and these Twitter users, are watching very closely to see that justice is handled fairly.
The book On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century is available here.