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A mural depicting George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor created by artist Leslie Barlow in Minneapolis, MN.

For all those who loved and knew George Floyd as a son, brother, father, or friend, no trial—and no conviction—can change the simple and awful fact that he is gone.
 
But George Floyd’s death doesn’t just belong to those who knew him: It resonated across the country. It tapped into a well of rage and pain that Black communities have lived with for too long—and which Americans of all backgrounds finally began to understand, many for the first time.
 
Whatever our race, background, or zip code, we all want to live without fearing for our lives or the lives of our loved ones. But time and again, we have witnessed the brutal murder of Black Americans—with no one held accountable.
 
The guilty verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial is a first step towards accountability. But as the recent murder of Daunte Wright attests, the people entrusted to serve and protect our communities continue to target, detain, and kill Black people with impunity. We live in the most incarcerated nation on earth, a nation that has yet to reckon with its racist history—or its racist present.
 
The obstacles to justice—not justice in a single case, but justice as a governing principle—can feel insurmountable. But there is a solution: building Black political power and representation in order to create, as abolitionist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore says, “life-affirming institutions.”
 
When we come together in solidarity to leverage our collective power, we can hold government leaders and public servants accountable. We can advance solutions like defunding the police. And we can begin to dismantle systems that have purposefully kept Black and Brown communities unstable and unsafe for decades.
 
What gives me hope is that people of all backgrounds came together last summer—and have continued to work together in the long months since—to demand justice. They did it despite a global pandemic and sometimes brutal police crackdowns. And I know that we will continue to stand up and fight for change that has been too long in coming.


 

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Date sent: April 20, 2021

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