Cities brace for unrest but get celebrations instead
Across America, communities had prepared for the worst. They had put up barriers and called in reinforcements. They had boarded up windows and declared emergencies. They were bracing for Derek Chauvin to be acquitted of George Floyd’s murder, for the inevitable protests that would follow, for the strife and conflict and destruction of last year to be replayed this spring.
That’s certainly what B.J. Wilder was ready for. The Minneapolis resident had been disappointed too many times, seen justice deferred or denied all too often, particularly for Black Americans. His city, he said, felt like “a powder keg.”
But when the decision came, he and the others who had gathered outside the Cup Foods store, where Floyd was killed, got something unexpected. As the guilty verdicts on all three counts of murder and manslaughter were announced to the crowd, there were tears of joy, hugs and cheers. Instead of anger and betrayal, Wilder experienced relief, and even some hope.
“It feels like a new day in America,” said Wilder.
Nationwide, expected protests over the latest injustice gave way to celebrations that the jury in Minneapolis “did the right thing.”
That was how former President Barack and Michelle Obama put it and, for once in a hyperpolarized nation, there was relatively little disagreement — at least in public.
Civil rights activists praised the decision, and so did police chiefs. Politicians on either side of the aisle found rare common ground. Mayors dared to exhale.
The Chauvin verdict wasn’t enough to heal America’s deepest wounds, all seemed to agree. But at least it wasn’t
going to inflame them further.
“Oh my lord,” said Shawn Mayes, a fourth-generation Black Minnesotan in a trembling voice as she celebrated in Minneapolis. “I feel like I can breathe.”
In predominantly Black West Philadelphia, a woman driving by lowered her window, raised a fist and shouted “Guilty!” moments after the verdict was read. On a sunny spring day, residents sitting on their porches — eyes trained on smartphones or listening intently to radio news — cheered. Cars honked, people whooped, neighbors hugged.
“I’m glad that Derek Chauvin is going to jail,” said Shanee Garner, a lifelong West Philadelphia resident who is a legislative director for a City Council member. “But I hope that this moment is not taken as an indicator that our system is just and police brutality is solved.”
The reaction was a far cry from what community leaders had feared.
From the streets leading to the courthouse where Chauvin stood trial to cities across the country, buildings had been fortified with plywood and police had been put on high alert as state and local leaders prepared for possible protests.
In the Twin Cities, thousands of National Guard troops were deployed. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, had warned that rioting or looting “will not be tolerated.”
In Oakland, Calif., police Chief LeRonne Armstrong toured the city’s shuttered downtown before the verdict and pleaded that protesters demonstrate peacefully, whether Chauvin was found guilty or not.
“Whatever the outcome might be, destroying our city is not going to change anything,” he said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said leaders are in “constant, literally daily conversations” about how to respond to possible protests.
Atlanta sent home all nonessential city employees.
Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat, had declared an emergency, while putting the National Guard on call.
The responses reflected the scale of unrest last year — not only after Floyd’s death but also after a number of other prominent cases in which Black men and women died or were gravely injured at the hands of police in cities such as Louisville; Kenosha, Wis.; Philadelphia; and Rochester, N.Y.
Rather than a descent into strife, the guilty verdict delivered something far different: a renewed faith that justice might be possible, a hope that out of the chaos of last year, a more equitable and just society might emerge.
But the optimism was also tempered by realism, along with reminders that a single verdict isn’t enough.
“Holding one murderer accountable does not deliver justice for George Floyd and other victims of state-sponsored violence,” Phillip Atiba Goff, CEO and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, said in a statement. “Only holding ourselves accountable for creating and maintaining the system that enabled Chauvin can bring us any closer.”
Goff, who testified before Congress in June alongside Floyd’s brother Philonise, said a “long slog toward justice” remained in order to overcome “generations of discrimination and disinvestment.”
The National Civil Rights Museum — housed in the onetime Memphis, Tenn., motel where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead — issued a statement reminding people that the Chauvin verdict, while welcome, was an anomaly.
“Justice was served in this case,” the statement said. “But the justice we need is bigger than the verdict of this one case. Hopefully, this case will set a precedent for the verdicts to come for the many other victims of unjust police killings.”