Chauvin Verdict – One Conviction Doesn’t End this Struggle
One Conviction Doesn’t End this Struggle
The conviction of Derek Chauvin was a hard-fought victory. Darnella Frazier, the brave 17-year-old, recorded the murder and took it viral. Community bystanders tried to stop the murder and spoke up in court. An estimated 26 million people took their anger and moral revulsion to the streets — in protests that met the same police terror that grips too many American communities. Generations of organizers, activists and educators have been sounding the alarm and putting forward programs to end the terror. The verdict was a win — one that has been hundreds of years in the making.
What people do makes a difference.
At the same time, we all know that one conviction does not end this struggle. From the day the trial began, police in this country killed about three more people each day. Among them: Daunte Wright, 20 years old, just a few miles from the Minneapolis courtroom, after a traffic stop. Adam Toledo,13 years old, with hands up in a Chicago alley. Ma’Khia Bryant, 16 years old, shot by police in front of her house in Columbus, Ohio — just a few minutes before the judge read the jury’s “guilty, guilty, guilty” verdict.
Police terror is not new in this country. It goes back 400 years.
Legalized violence is part of the bigger picture of how political power works in this country. The state of Florida just made it legal to ram your car into protestors exercising their right to free speech. Twenty-seven anti-protest bills have been passed and 71 bills are pending in 29 states, including Ohio and Illinois. Hundreds of bills to limit voting rights are coming before state legislatures. An earlier round of voter suppression purged almost 16 million voters between 2014 and 2016. Meanwhile, a handful of billionaires are invited onto policy-making bodies at the highest levels.
All this while the ideology of white supremacy achieves organizational cohesion in groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys — and helped launch an insurrection in the US Capitol.
No one is safe from police terror until the African-American people are safe. No one is safe from the pandemic until all have full and equal access to the best that science can provide. No one will be free from the crimes of this economic system of capitalism until society moves beyond all forms of inequality and exploitation.
Humanity is capable of more than this. And more is possible.
A struggle between those who rule and those who are ruled is taking shape.
A country founded on genocide and slavery cannot move beyond capitalism without fighting against the inequality, violence, and suppression that birthed it.
Revolutionaries throughout this country understand that America cannot cast off the chains of inequality without breaking the chains of exploitation. Nor can it rid society of capitalism without fighting against the effects of the slavery and genocide that birthed this country.
Along with thousands of revolutionaries, the LRNA is thinking about how to approach the revolutionary challenges of this moment.
What people do makes a difference. Let’s talk.