If you thought of Do the Right Thing and Radio Raheem after hearing of the death of Eric Garner, who died after being put in a banned chokehold by police on Thursday, you were not alone. Spike Lee himself apparently thought of Raheem, and took to Twitter this afternoon to share a video that cuts together footage of Garner’s arrest (“I can’t breathe,” repeats Garner, who had asthma) with the scene in which Raheem is killed in a chokehold by police.
It’s worth noting that Radio Raheem’s death in Do the Right Thing was itself inspired by the real-life death of Michael Stewart in 1983: Raheem is killed by the same chokehold that witnesses said police used against Stewart. In the crowd in the movie, a voice can be heard saying, “They did it again. Just like Michael Stewart.”
Readers should be warned that the video is very disturbing. It is not embeddable, but you can watch it on Lee’s profile page.
