While I'm generally not one to embrace the "waiting to exhale" metaphor of being African American in general... I have to admit. I heard the Derek Chauvin verdict and, well, I exhaled.
I'm not clear - haven't been, may not ever be - on why George Floyd affected this country as it did. It's easy, a little generic even to say "the video". We've had videos. We've been upset, Appalled, even. But George Floyd was... different.
It wasn't even the slow starting, but eventually thorough move to prosecute Chauvin (and his fellow officers... someday). No, what was different - what still has the ability to surprise me - is how Floyd's death and the protests that followed unblocked what had, in many cases, been years of lack of progress on many things, at many levels. Watching companies wholesale revamp policies and procedures. Hearing TV and film producers acknowledge and then take concrete steps to address systemic racism in casting and projects. Seeing all sorts of political conversations move to a whole other level of seriousness. I have been watching and discussing and writing about politics for a long, long time. And this past year, I can attest, is in many ways a thing I have never, ever seen in my lifetime.
And they found him guilty. And then I exhaled.
Chauvin's trial, at the very least, stands as the new prime example we can point to of how to get justice for policing right: whatever dismay I felt about Keith Ellison going into this effort, he made good on his promise to seek the appropriate justice: put the best prosecutors on the case. Assemble a compelling presentation of evidence. Anticipate the defense's pushback. And get police leadership to participate in acknowledging behavior that is simply out of bounds.
Unlike some, I continue to have deep admiration for Marcia Clark, and one thing she pointed out in her presentation of the OJ trial was how the prosecution went in and laid an unexpected story in chronological order: her first witness was a man walking his dog by Nicole's apartment, who heard noises and went to investigate. It was the start of establishing a timeline... one that, as she points out, became a bulletproof, uncontested demarcation of the events, and one which was deeply damaging to Simpson's claims of innocence.
Here too, the case against Chauvin started with a woman none of us had really seen: the gas station worker across the street, who, as it turned out, had the eyewitness seat for the start of Chauvin wrestling Floyd to the ground and pinning him there. She eventually took video, but as well, the gas station's camera, and a street camera were all introduced behind her testimony and laid out, before we'd seen the videos we all knew, the tragic sequence of events. And, per Clark, because of that gas station clerk, the defense was hemmed in well before they had even tried to discredit the bystanders on the other side of the street.
And I cry as I write this. I generally think the case was doomed for the defense once Donald Williams, the older man with martial arts experience, testified as to what he saw. When her broke down so thoroughly - as we all did - reliving that tape of that day, there was no coming back. He knew what he saw that day, and so did most of us. And once you know, you know.
Conservatives, faced with defending the literally indefensible, largely gave up. Fox refused to air courtroom coverage, despite the fact that obviously, America was watching. And at the end, rather than simply isolate Chauvin's guilt from everyone else ("lone bad actor" was a gift), Fox's most egregious types - Tucker, Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld - proclaimed that this was "caving to the mob" and "unfair to the police". In part, clearly, they understood that underlying this case was the long history of police misconduct against minorities, especially men, but hardly exclusively. But in part, that throwing up of hands elided the harder question they don't want to be asked - just what, exactly, was unfairly presented by the prosecution in that case? In more sober moments, even Fox lawyers and judicial experts (even Jeanine Pirro fer Chrissakes) admitted that the defense played a weak hand badly and evidence of guilt was fairly clear.
There are those who want a moment to solve everything, those for whom the exhale is not enough. I can't say, wouldn't begin to guess, that this Chauvin verdict is a world changer. A young woman was killed in Ohio the day of the verdict. A case in North Carolina is already going sideways. There's every chance that those conservative, pro police types will exert whatever backlash they can to slow or withstand progress. No, the point is smaller, and simpler, and just, well, what it is: we got Chauvin convicted. And for now, that alone will be the change we wanted.
"the arc of history bends towards justice" is just that: the bending of a long line, away from the bad and towards the good. Thirty years after Rodney King, we have finally made it heard: the video shows what you think it shows. The bad cops in the videos are the problem. And that problem must be addressed. A change is gonna come. Something has already changed. It's not perfect, and no, it's not enough. But just for a minute, exhale. And let us catch our breath.
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