While Heartening, the Chauvin Verdict Is Still an Outlier

By Matthew John

A pleasant surprise arrived on the annual stoner holiday known simply as 4/20. After a tumultuous year of monumental protests during the deadliest pandemic in recent history, a verdict on the Derek Chauvin case was finally reached. As CNN reported, “Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on all charges in the death of George Floyd,” and “faces up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for second-degree manslaughter.” 

Understandably, celebrations ensued.

But before the dust had settled, we received heart-wrenching news that another Black American had been killed by police. Sixteen-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was gunned down by an officer in Columbus, Ohio 30 minutes before the Chauvin verdict was delivered. The celebrations seemed to fizzle out shortly after they began. This tragic incident is not only a microcosm of the larger systemic issue of police violence, but a lesson in the naïveté of expecting “justice” from this system in the first place. 

The ubiquitous phenomenon of American police killing Black people can be historically traced back to the very inception of policing as slave patrols in the antebellum South. Continuing through the Black Codes, Jim Crow, and the War on Drugs, American policing has always maintained a close bond with white supremacy. A ProPublica analysiseven found that young Black males in recent years were 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than their white counterparts.

In fact, 64 Americans were killed by police during the trial of Derek Chauvin alone. While attention is hyper-focused on high profile cases like that of George Floyd, is it easy to forget that American police officers kill at least 1,000 people each year — a body count higher than all annual mass shooters combined. This nationwide massacre is clearly out of control and primarily encompasses an ongoing genocide against Black and Brown people that is consistent with American history more broadly. As many are reluctantly realizing, there is a good chance that this institution cannot be reformed.

While Democratic Party politicians gave disingenuous speeches exploiting the memory of George Floyd, I reflected on the fact that Floyd was killed in a blue state and in a city with a Democratic mayor. I thought about how Democratic president Joe Biden proposed increasing police funding by $300 million and sent the military to Minneapolis to further brutalize and terrorize those who dared to protest this continuous state violence against people of color. This is a systemic issue — not a partisan one. Both parties are complicit. Yet Democrats positioned themselves as the “good guys” and took credit despite upholding literally the same racist policies as Republicans.

Possibly the worst offender was House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said that George Floyd “sacrificed” himself for the cause of justice. This was an absurd and disgusting remark — Floyd didn’t choose to be murdered. In reality, by convicting him of murder, Derek Chauvin was sacrificed to prop up an unfounded belief in justice within this inherently racist system. And this belief is indeed an extension of the American exceptionalism that is crucial to the ideological survival of this white supremacist, settler-colonial nation on the brink of collapse.

When anyone - especially an agent of “the law” - is filmed conducting a sadistic murder in broad daylight, they should be convicted every single time. The insincere gloating by the political establishment in the wake of the Chauvin verdict reveals precisely how rare anything approaching “justice” is found in the United States. We can show this empirically; between 2005 and early 2019, only 35 killer cops were convicted of a crime (a rate of far less than one percent). Based on these statistics and what we know about the profoundly corrupt culture of American policing, it is clear that the vast majority of violent crimes committed by cops go unpunished.

None of this means we shouldn’t celebrate the Chauvin verdict. We absolutely should. Seeing the Floyd family’s reaction to the news brought tears to my eyes. Although nothing can bring George Floyd back, this outcome is far better than the flagrant dismissal of justice that usually occurs in similar situations. In addition to the prospect of a fraction of justice being served, another heartening aspect of this development is the realization that activism works, that mass movements work, and — as much as the establishment doesn’t want to admit it — that property destruction works. Especially under capitalism, where human need is commodified and private property is valued more than life itself, threatening almighty property is one of the only tactics that catches the attention of the ruling class.

As Frederick Douglass famously said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Without the massive protest movement (likely the largest in U.S. history) in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, that vicious thug Derek Chauvin would likely still be roaming free in the streets of Minneapolis. While we can recognize the significance of this verdict, we must also recognize that we have a long way to go to organize a multi-racial, working-class movement capable of enacting systemic change. If this is what it took to convict an obvious murderer, imagine what it will take to build the kind of society we want.