I THINK GIANNA FLOYD WAS RIGHT. HER DAD WILL CHANGE THE WORLD.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but a moving digitized video is priceless. You get to see just about everything that takes place in real time on social media videos. Minneapolis prosecutor Steve Schleicher told us we could believe our eyes. We saw what we thought we saw. The video of George Floyd being suffocated to death by Derek Chauvin was exactly what we thought it was. How many times in your life have you watched a Black man on a live video feed gasping for air, and pleading for his life with a cop’s knee on his neck? It usually only lasts a couple of minutes, whether the subdued person lives or dies at the scene. Nine minutes and 29 second is the exact amount of time Derek Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd’s neck, and every second of it was caught on camera. We all saw the video. We all witnessed a murder. We all were traumatized.
In August 1955, when Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot in the head, had barbed wire and a 75-pound fan strung around his neck, and was thrown into the Tallahatchie River where his body was found three days later, America didn’t get to see live video footage of this barbaric execution. People just had to take the information the media produced and try to make sense of it. In December 1969, the world did not get to see Facebook posts of Fred Hampton gunned down in his home by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department and the FBI. We only saw photos of his remains in the aftermath of his homicide and we heard accounts of what happened from law enforcement and the media. Technology has changed the perception most people have of police-involved killings by capturing clear concise images that cannot lie. The game has changed, or has it?
We watched video footage of the killings of Alfred Olango, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Natasha McKenna, Michael Brown, Korryn Gaines, Tamir Rice, Daunte Wright, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and so many other Black men, women and children who have not gotten justice. I’d like to pontificate that the guilty verdict in Derek Chauvin’s case is a win for all of the people mentioned above, but I must keep my opinion based on reality.
The reality is that justice missed these human beings altogether. The reality is many Black people expected a manslaughter conviction at best, and the acquittal of Derek Chauvin as a worst-case scenario. Chauvin being convicted of all charges is miraculous to the Black community, because we rarely receive justice, even if we protest and demonstrate for weeks on end. There were protests after most of the killings mentioned above, most of which did not produce arrests of the officers involved, much less any kind of conviction. When George Floyd was killed, the Black community had grown weary of being told we did not see what was caught on camera. The disregard for Black lives and the blatant insult to the intelligence of the Black community needs to stop for Black people to be able to breathe freely. People of all ages and races were tired of being traumatized by watching videos of Black people treated like animals and killed like prey. The reality is that there had to be a nationwide movement that included demonstrations and protests to get Derek Chauvin charged with George Floyd’s murder, regardless of the very transparent evidence that was caught on video. Had people all over the nation not taken to the streets in fervent opposition to the murder of George Floyd, Derek Chauvin might be a free man today.
Darnella Frazier, the young lady who caught Floyd’s heinous murder on video and streamed it online, is the real MVP. She is a hero. Without the video, there might not be a case. My hat is off to her. I commend the people who refused to accept the notion that their eyes were deceiving them when they saw the video of George Floyd being murdered by Derek Chauvin. I salute the activists and community leaders who risked their lives during the worst pandemic in 100 years to march for a man they did not know personally but loved unconditionally. They brought George Floyd’s life and death to the forefront of the minds of the global community, which humanized him in the most beautiful brilliant way despite how he was killed.
Six-year-old Gianna Floyd, George Floyd’s daughter, said her dad was going to change the world. I believe she is right.
Chauvin being convicted of all charges is miraculous to the Black community, because we rarely receive justice, even if we protest and demonstrate for weeks on end.