Pride News Canada's Leader In African Canadian & Caribbean News, Views & Lifestyle
The verdict is in. Derek Chavin is guilty on all counts.
What does this mean? Justice was served in this case. Justice prevailed. But the justice we need is bigger than the verdict of this one case. Hopefully, this case will set a precedent for the verdicts to come, for the many other victims of unjust police killings.
We thank the jury for bravely doing the right thing. Our heart is with George Floyd’s family, who has endured the devastation of his death.
In too many instances, with too many deaths, justice was not present. It didn’t prevail. This guilty verdict saved this nation, and our communities, from the explosive, aggravated response from people not able to take the injustices any longer. We know this verdict will not replace George Floyd, whose death created turmoil for this nation and a worldwide response.
Watching George Floyd suffer for 9 minutes 29 seconds, last May, and reliving it every day since then, and now, during the Derek Chavin trial, has been extremely difficult. We’ve watched and learned more about the specifics of George Floyd’s dying moments than we really want to, or can, bear to know. But seeing it and hearing the defense’s rationale for his death and the prosecution’s evidence of his murder show the two Americas we live in.
We are not okay. We need much healing from George Floyd’s death and the thousands of others, who have died, without just cause.
At the National Civil Rights Museum, we are reminded every day of the need for meaningful protest to bring attention to inhumanity and injustice. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led many non-violent, but disruptive, protests. He refused to be silenced in the wake of injustice. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
We are a museum of protest and we tell the stories of the men and women, who sacrificed their lives for civil and human rights, through disruptive, non-violent protests.
We saw evidence, last summer, with 100-plus days of protest for the series of police-involved deaths, that people want to be heard and action taken to stop the killings. As the nation heard the verdict in the Derek Chavin trial and mourned more police-involved deaths that have occurred during this trial, we are not okay.
It’s a difficult time as we experience, directly or indirectly, what is happening around us. It’s difficult to explain to our children what they are seeing or hearing and how it may touch them. It’s difficult to discuss, among ourselves, how this continues to happen, even when the nation is admitting that we have a race problem.
Until we do something constructive about it, with the intention of stopping it, not just talking about it, the deaths and the justification for them will continue.
No. We are STILL not okay.
