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By: Symone Sparks Today, April 20, 2021, Derek Chauvin was convicted on all counts for the murder of George Floyd. Today , we let out a collective breath as a police officer was finally held accountable for their inhumane actions towards a member of the Black community. However, this convicition comes few and far between. Only 27 police officers have been convicted of murder or manslaughter since 2005, when in 2020 alone 984 people were killed by police. It's only April, and already 319 people have lost their lives at the hands of police. Derek Chauvin's conviction is ananomoly, not a standard.
I want to make something very clear. Derek Chauvin was a sacrificial lamb, George Floyd was not. Nancy Pelosi, in her remarks about the conviction, thanked George Floyd for his sacrifice. He didn't sacrifice his life, it was taken from him. Sacrifice implies that it was voluntary, that he, in some way, planned for his own death. Floyd didn't plan his own death and he had no intentions of being a martyr. Derek Chauvin on the other hand was the sacrifical lamb for the Minneapolis police department, Minneapolis the city, and for the Black Lives Matter movement, I just don't think that they told him that. It's been said over and over that normally police officers close ranks and use qualified immunity to their advantage, but not this time. Why? Because the world was watching and because Minneapolis was going to burn down if he wasn't convicted. Chauvin had to be convicted and they used officers, including the Chief of Police, to do that. The death of Floyd caught the world's attention. There were mass protests in all 50 states and in several countries around the world. Minneapolis became a powder keg immediately following Floyd's death. Activists and protestors already admitted that their city was going to blow if Chauvin wasn't convicted. That would have made a spectacle that couldn't be spun or explained away. Maybe America would finally have to answer for the atrocities that Black men and women face at the hands of police every day. The attention it would all be given might actually make people begin to reform the system. But, they can't have that. The system is still perfectly intact and Derek Chauvin was simply a placatory scape goat to keep people from asking too many questions. There is still so much that needs to be done. This conviciton isn't going to bring unity to America and it's not going to get the stain out of America's soul. What it does do, is show the seriousness of the rallying cry 'no justice, no peace'. Minneapolis did what they needed to do to save their city. It shows what fighting for justice can do. The more Black men and women that keep dying is creating a growing time bomb, that at some point will blow. And then citizens, and the system will have to make a decision, or everything is going to burn to the ground.
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