After the Chauvin verdict, has anything changed?
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It was very good news to hear that Derrick Chauvin was found guilty on the three counts against him for murdering George Floyd. It is now officially called a murder. I hope it gives the family at least some sense of closure, although I’m sure that Chauvin will be appealing and putting them through even more hell.
What happens now? Two questions now are 1) whether or not this will affect the way that the police act towards unarmed citizens, especially non-white people, and 2) whether or not politicians will grow a pair and rein in the out of control vigilanteism and militarization of the police.
Very early initial signs I’ve seen are mixed.
In Memphis TN last night, after the Chauvin verdict was announced, police shot into a car after a traffic stop. The car pulled over into a parking lot, and shots were fired.
To be fair, reports aren’t clear yet about what happened. “According to police […] As the officer approached the vehicle, police say someone inside the Infiniti started shooting..” The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is “working to independently determine the order of events” and the officer has been placed on leave for now.
So the good news is that no one was killed, that it’s being investigated, and the officer was placed on leave right away. The bad news is that, if the police started the shooting, or if they pulled over the car for no justifiable reason, leading to this situation, it’s more of the same. I will post any updates I get about it.Democratic leadership doesn’t appear to be strategically using the verdict as a way to send a clear signal that the police are out of control and that defunding (or drastically reforming it) is a top priority.
Nancy Pelosi thanked George Floyd for “for sacrificing your life for justice” — he didn’t sacrifice anything, he was murdered against his will — and said that sentencing is “its own procedure” — instead of calling for Chauvin to be held responsible under the fullest extent of the law. Later on she (or her staff) tweeted out that the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act must be enacted in response to a tweet critical of her press conference. Reacting instead of leading.
Biden said he was “so relieved.” As if the main thing on the administration’s mind were the protests that might happen in Chauvin weren’t found guilty, rather than giving some sense of justice to Floyd’s family, or the travesty of justice that not guilty verdicts would have meant on top of the original travesty of justice of Floyd being murdered because he was Black. We need more from Biden than saying Black men’s “lives must be valued in our nation. Full stop” and vague comments that the verdict shouldn’t be the end of it. You’re the President: what specific things will *you* do now: demanding your colleagues in Congress actually pass legislation? A series of executive orders? Or just spew platitudes?
Maybe I’m too cynical, but I see this guilty verdict as a big opportunity to get more justice — to get meaningful reform underway, to start changing police culture — but Democrats are either ill-prepared (at best) or unwilling (more likely) to get some momentum going while the nation’s attention is focused on this. Let’s hope I’m either wrong or that progressives and activists can push Democrats to actually do something about this.
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