One Anti-Racist Action You Can Take Today: Let It Sink In
By Guimel DeCarvalho
Vice President of People & Culture and Chief Diversity Officer
Yesterday Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts in the murder of George Floyd.
Breathe.
Let it sink in.
Breathe.
Sometimes the best way for me to process and truly understand something is when I have to explain it to my 6-year-old son. When you can’t rely on a shared understanding of sociopolitical forces to talk about something, you have to truly speak from the heart and distill it to its parts.
This is what it took for a police officer to be held accountable.
A person died.
People were traumatized by watching it in person and not being able to stop it.
Millions were moved to action by watching a video a teen recorded.
The nation had to change. Millions of people around the world had to march. Hundreds of days passed and people kept calling for someone to be held accountable. There was an 11-day trial and 38 prosecution witnesses for a jury to “believe your eyes.”
This is a start.
Although we all could believe our own eyes, there was nothing guaranteed about this verdict. There was nothing systemic about this outcome. That is what to think about as we move ahead: We need to create a new system that ensures everyone is accountable for their actions; we need to determine what supports we need to make sure our communities are working well and we must not stop advocating for equity.
Justice is a practice, not an end.” – Eddie Glaude, professor of African American studies at Princeton University
Read this article about what to do next.
Politico: 21 Experts on What the Verdict Means – and Where We Go From Here
