It should go without saying that am beyond pleased to hear the guilty verdict for Derrick Chauvin. But let’s not forget that George Floyd is still dead. He didn’t need to die. Neither did Tamir Rice or Sandra Bland or Daniel Shaver or Breonna Taylor or Elijah McClain or Adam Toledo. The list is too long.

There are countless more George Floyds out there, black, latinx, indigenous, white, and the vast majority of them are poor or of the working and middle classes with little to no representation. And their cases receive far less press coverage or none at all.

In 2019 there were 999 fatal shootings. In 2020, there were 1,021 fatal police shootings. And in just the first 3 months of 2021, 213 civilians have been shot by police. In addition to this, “the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 35 fatal shootings per million of the population as of March 2021,” according to Statista.

The fact is that there will be no real justice here as long as money goes to more policing instead of social and economic infrastructure and this cruel system of state sanctioned violence remains intact.

Kenn Orphan April 2021

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