I Can't Breathe

A Killing on Bay Street

De: Matt Taibbi

Narrado por: Dominic Hoffman

A work of riveting literary journalism that explores the roots and repercussions of the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police—from the bestselling author of The Divide

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST

On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of Garner’s life were captured on video and seen by millions. His agonized last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the nascent Black Lives Matter protest movement. A grand jury ultimately declined to indict the officer who wrestled Garner to the pavement.

Matt Taibbi’s deeply reported retelling of these events liberates Eric Garner from the abstractions of newspaper accounts and lets us see the man in full—with all his flaws and contradictions intact. A husband and father with a complicated personal history, Garner was neither villain nor victim, but a fiercely proud individual determined to do the best he could for his family, bedeviled by bad luck, and ultimately subdued by forces beyond his control.

In America, no miscarriage of justice exists in isolation, of course, and in I Can’t Breathe Taibbi also examines the conditions that made this tragedy possible. Featuring vivid vignettes of life on the street and inside our Kafkaesque court system, Taibbi’s kaleidoscopic account illuminates issues around policing, mass incarceration, the underground economy, and racial disparity in law enforcement. No one emerges unsullied, from the conservative district attorney who half-heartedly prosecutes the case to the progressive mayor caught between the demands of outraged activists and the foot-dragging of recalcitrant police officials.

A masterly narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can’t Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice.

“Brilliant . . . Taibbi is unsparing is his excoriation of the system, police, and courts. . . . This is a necessary and riveting work.”—Booklist (starred review)

Reseñas de la Crítica

“A complex and textured examination of the complicated personalities, flawed legal system, and politics revolving around the police killing of forty-three-year-old Eric Garner, whose final words became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.”—The Boston Globe, “Must Read Books for the Fall”

“[A] brilliant work of narrative nonfiction . . . [Matt] Taibbi is unsparing is his excoriation of the system, police, and courts that led to the fatal choke hold and worked to blur the abuse afterward. . . . This is a necessary and riveting work.”—Booklist (starred review)

“[A] searing exposé . . . After deeply exploring Garner’s life from a variety of perspectives, Taibbi offers detailed reporting about the out-of-control Staten Island police officers present at the death scene . . . [and] the futile efforts of the Garner family to achieve posthumous justice. . . . What emerges from the author’s superb reporting and vivid writing is a tragically revealing look at a broken criminal justice system geared to serve white citizens while often overlooking or ignoring the rights of others.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Matt Taibbi’s I Can’t Breathe marries the best instincts of explanatory narrative journalism with uncompromising moral clarity. The result is a riveting walk through decades of policing policy and big city politics that culminated, seemingly inevitably, in Eric Garner’s killing by the New York Police Department. While he may have set out to document a fatal injustice, the tale Taibbi tells is not one of a death, but one of a life. In capturing the fullness of Garner’s ‘imperfect humanity,’ I Can’t Breathe adds a vital account of police violence and a vivid exploration of its lingering costs. Taibbi, through thorough reporting and captivating writing, captures the totality of an American tragedy.”—Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize–winning national correspondent for The Washington Post and author of the New York Times bestselling They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement

Thank You

Great Book. Now, I hope people can see why police interest is so low today.

Powerfully written, story of injustice, MUST READ!

Matt Taibbi has outdone himself after his fantastic book The Divide exposed the profound Injustice of the two tiered justice system in America. I Can't Breathe is a specific look into the heart of policing in America through the abusive racist practices inherent in New York cities criminal justice system. His writing style is unflinching and honest regarding the personal life of Eric Garner and those that knew him, providing heartwarming and tragic details to the larger narrative of historic import.
I would ask every school assign this to students so they understand the society they live in, that our laws do not apply equally, our rights still subject to violation based on race, that the segregation and inequity of the past has very much reemerged with devastating consequences.
Matt Taibbi makes clear the prolonged ignorance, wilful or not, of white America to the extreme injustice, structural racism, and systemic oppression faced by intentionally segregated communities and exposes the history of official misconduct, policing quotas, broken windows, and other misguided policies that led to the criminalization of communities of color. Well researched, fast paced and unsparing in its assessment of NYC's political class, it honors the life of Eric Garner and his daughter's struggle for justice. In light of her untimely death, this book has even more resonance, as it tells the true nature of the system she was still fighting against through her last years of life. Rest in peace Erica.

A must read that explores our racist society

Taibbi does a great job of exploring the life and death of Eric Garner, the man murdered by the NYPD. This was a more complex story that I'd thought. He then goes on to illustrate how Garner's death is emblematic of our society and how it actively marginalizes black and brown people. He adds historical context to his argument later in the book in what is a compelling and ultimately disturbing story. A must read for anyone interested in what "Black Lives Matter" really means.

A Must Read

This should be mandatory reading for anyone truly interested in understanding today's racial climate. Excellent!

Explores the cause and effect of the event

loved the book. it was very informative and shared a lot of the behind-the-scenes activities and occurrences that led to the events of the day.