April 22, 2021: We mourn, we rage, we rest, we soldier on.
This week, a jury returned a guilty verdict for the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was executed in broad daylight by police. Former cop Derek Chauvin’s conviction was possible in large part due to the brave actions of Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old Black teenager, who filmed the deadly nine minute and twenty-nine second encounter – and a global uprising demanding accountability for police terror against Black people.
When the verdict landed, many of us felt little relief. Accountability for the racist police state matters. But it doesn’t bring George Floyd or any of the other Black people murdered by police back.
We had barely caught our breath when we learned that before the jury even read its verdict, police responding to a call for help in Columbus, Ohio, shot 16-year old Ma’Khia Bryant four times in the chest. Just another reminder that for Black people in the U.S., the police do not serve and protect – they actually create danger and perpetrate violence. Black and Native American people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people
We demand justice for Ma’Khia Bryant, just as we demand justice for 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a young Black man, and 13-year-old Adam Toledo, a Mexican-American boy, and 17- year-old Anthony Thompson, and Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade and Layleen Polanco and Sandra Bland and Oscar Grant and… Accountability is important. But accountability is not justice.
Justice is not killer cops going to jail. Justice is no more killer cops.
Justice is a nation where Black people can drive or walk down a street without being surveilled, harassed, criminalized, or even killed by someone brandishing a badge and a gun. Where a Black child can eat Skittles and get in fights with peers without being brutalized, arrested, or murdered by police. Where Black people are truly free.
If every cop who killed were convicted—instead of one in 2,000—it still would not be justice. This is about more than rooting out the “bad apples.” A system of social control rooted in protecting white supremacy—literally an outgrowth of slave-catchers in the South—cannot be reformed. It must be abolished.
We send love and care to everyone grieving and afraid and tired. We send you rest and healing and song. To our white family, friends, colleagues: Please don’t look away. This is your fight. White supremacy is a system, not an individual person or act. It is a system created by white people and cannot be dismantled without you. The work is hard. It’s exhausting. And it’s just beginning.
Please join us in committing—or recommitting—to doing your part.
