Postscript , April 21, 2021
On the Conviction of Derek Chauvin for the Killing of George Floyd
Amidst the commentary the morning after the verdict, someone on NPR referred to Chauvin’s conviction as a “turning point.” It is not a turning point. It is a milestone on the road, however, a victory. But it’s a milestone that would not have been reached, a victory that would not have been won, without the BLM movement. Would not have been won without BLM! That movement must continue, for the struggle is far from over. Nothing shows that more clearly than the shooting on the very same day of verdict of a 16-year-old girl, shot like a mad dog, a girl who had called the cops herself because she was being attacked. And of course, the week before the verdict there was the killing of Daunte Wright in a suburb of the same city. I agree with Zak Cheney-Rice, that while the conviction is a victory, it also represents an exercise in damage control by the Minneapolis Police Department and by the powers that be in Minnesota and beyond. (See Zak Cheney-Rice, “This Is Not Justice. It’s Self-Preservation.”)
Links
This piece was originally published in another blog in July 2020. Since then, new police killings of African-Americans, as well as exposés of other facets of American Apartheid have, I believe, only served to confirm the theses expressed in Black Lives Matter and American Apartheid–The Road Ahead. Below are links to some of them:
‘Two cities’ collide as Chicago’s social time bomb explodes
Racist housing policies have created some oppressively hot neighborhoods
Covid-19 death rate among African Americans and Latinos rising sharply
Blacks and Hispanics are twice as likely to test positive for Covid-19
Brought to light–a historic injustice in D.C.
Evanston, IL, has first reparations program
This U.S. governor was impeached—for cracking down on the KKK
The United Nations held a major meeting on race. Why the US and UK skipped it.
