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<\/p>\nFor days, Nekima Levy Armstrong has gotten up early and joined\u00a0activists to protest in front of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like many Black Americans, she is nervous about what’s happening inside the\u00a0concrete and glass building. Jury selection is underway there this week to determine the fate of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who died after Chauvin placed his knee on George Floyd’s\u00a0neck for more than nine minutes while onlookers begged the officer to stop and Floyd cried out for his mother.<\/p>\n
The resulting video\u00a0sparked a summer of protests and a national reckoning on race. Although Levy Armstrong\u00a0says she hopes for a conviction, she acknowledges that verdict will not ease her concerns about systemic racism in policing, which has resulted in a disproportionate number of Black men, women and children being killed\u00a0by law enforcement officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are feeling a mix of anticipation and anxiety,\u201d said Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and founder of the city’s grassroots Racial Justice Network.\u00a0\u201cWe have not really seen white male officers held accountable for killing black people in our state, so there are a lot of firsts and unknown factors. But I know convictions will not change the system. That will take diligence and time and a more rigorous approach to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Civil rights attorney and Minneapolis, Minnesota, activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, shown here at a rally, plans to be among a dozen groups protesting Monday as the trial of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyds begins. (Photo: Courtesy of Nekima Levy Armstrong)<\/span><\/p>\n After a year of national Black Lives Matter protests sparked by Floyd\u2019s death and a pandemic that left many people of color unemployed, sick\u00a0or dead, the wall-to-wall media\u00a0<\/strong>coverage of Chauvin’s<\/strong>trial is poised to reopen wounds that haven’t healed for many Black Americans.<\/p>\n At the same time, many white Americans seem to have moved on from the feelings of introspection and solidarity that emerged in the weeks after Floyd, 46, was killed.\u00a0<\/p>\n A\u00a0USA TODAY\/Ipsos poll\u00a0published last week found\u00a0trust in the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped to 50% from 60% last June, while only 36% of Americans described Floyd’s death as a murder\u00a0compared to 60% who said the same last summer. Those saying law and order was paramount even if it meant limiting peaceful protests grew in past months from 45% to 49%.<\/p>\n According to the USA TODAY\/Ipsos poll, Black Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the progress of racial justice. The poll indicates that 54%<\/strong>of Black Americans said\u00a0race relations have worsened in the past year, as compared to 40% of white respondents. There is also a telling\u00a0gap along racial lines in how Americans\u00a0view Floyd’s death along racial lines, with 28% of whites calling it murder compared to 64% of Blacks.<\/p>\n \u201cThis trial is politically important, but psychologically Black America is so numb from the turnstile of incidents of white cops killing Black people that even a conviction here will have a minimal impact,\u201d said James Taylor, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and author of \u201cBlack Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor said\u00a0the current state of race relations in the United States is similar to the violence and divisions of\u00a0the post-Civil War South.<\/p>\n “This is the worst it’s ever been in this country outside of Jim Crow,” he said. \u201cThe real crime of right now is that Democrats aren’t fighting for Black people in the same way that (Donald) Trump fought for his people.”<\/p>\n Taylor pointed to recent incidents where officers were not charged in the death of Black civilians, such as the decision last month not to prosecute the Rochester, New York, officers who a year ago placed a mesh hood over the head of Daniel Prude, 41, who subsequently lost consciousness and died.<\/p>\n Prude was having a psychotic episode, but activists saw in the incident the same example of force that was present in the death of Floyd, who was placed under arrest for allegedly<\/strong>trying to pass off a fake $20 bill and wound up gasping for air under Chauvin\u2019s knee.<\/p>\n Research shows that systemic racism continues to amount to a psychological and physiological “Black tax” for many Black Americans as a result of near-daily discrimination and prejudice, no\u00a0matter how high their socio-economic status, according to a\u00a0study this week from the\u00a0Fielding School of Public Health at the\u00a0University of California,\u00a0Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Black men in particular “face constant experiences of discrimination and disappointment when they try to contribute,” Vicky Mays,\u00a0the study’s co-senior author, said in a statement. “They are treated like criminals in a society where they often are not allowed to achieve their full potential.”<\/p>\n Chauvin, 44, is charged with second-degree murder \u2014 which implies intent to kill \u2014 and manslaughter, although there still remains a possibility the case could be delayed and the charges could be lowered to\u00a0third-degree murder, which is an unintentional killing.<\/p>\n Minneapolis officials are bracing for protests throughout the trial, and have spent past weeks erecting fencing and barricades around government buildings while putting police officers and National Guardsmen on standby. The city was a flashpoint in the days and weeks following Floyd’s death last spring, as the images of Floyd crying “I can’t breathe” quickly became a slogan among activists the world over.<\/p>\n For author and historian\u00a0Douglas Brinkley, the video of Floyd’s death has become the 21st-century’s Zapruder film, the grainy silent color footage shot by Abraham Zapruder on the fall day in Dallas in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was killed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat video clip of Floyd is like the Zapruder film\u00a0in that everyone has now seen a heinous crime committed a thousand times over,\u201d said Brinkley, who teaches history at Rice University in Houston. \u201cPeople will tune into this trial. It\u2019s representative of the racial divide in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n People gather at the unveiling in Brooklyn, N.Y., of artist Kenny Altidor's memorial portrait of George Floyd, who was killed on Memorial Day 2020 in Minneapolis with police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes. (Photo: ANGELA WEISS, AFP via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n The aftermath of Floyd\u2019s death roiled the nation, an emotional boiling over after years of temperature-raising killings of Black Americans that include Philando Castile in 2016 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Oscar Grant in 2009 in Oakland, California, and Amadou Diallo in 1999 in New York, all on the heels of centuries of violence against Blacks that spans from\u00a0slavery to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond.<\/p>\n In the midst of the COVID-19\u00a0pandemic, Black protesters often joined by other Americans\u00a0marched in\u00a0cities in every state, while sympathetic rallies were staged around the world. The activism that emerged \u2014 focused on but not limited to the rise of the Black Lives Matter<\/strong>social justice movement<\/strong>nationally and in chapters around the nation \u2014 brought voters of color to the polls in record numbers and helped elect President\u00a0Joe Biden.<\/b><\/p>\n Biden, in addition to making\u00a0his running mate\u00a0Kamala Harris\u00a0the nation’s first Black and woman of color vice president, vowed to address systemic racism in federal housing, prisons, the White House and other branches of government. Last week, the House passed the\u00a0George Floyd\u00a0Justice in\u00a0Policing Act, which would ban\u00a0chokeholds and change legal protections that shield officers from prosecution.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But critics complain change has been too slow.\u00a0<\/strong>Black activists said\u00a0they plan to hold Biden to his campaign promises while continuing to keep the pressure on state and local governments to reform a system they feel is inherently biased against them.<\/p>\n \u201cThis trial is one of the first major ones after the summer\u2019s uprisings, so while in the past such outcomes haven\u2019t been in our favor, we\u2019re now\u00a0watching carefully to see if the legal system might be reforming due to pressure,\u201d said Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Abdullah recalled the trial that followed the beating of Rodney King by a group of Los Angeles police officers in 1991, in which an all-white jury assembled in a courthouse in a white suburb absolved the officers of responsibility, sparking days of deadly rioting. King\u2019s beating also was caught on videotape.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re here now on the 30th anniversary of that King beating, and what the criminal justice and political system told us then was, \u2018Don\u2019t believe your lying eyes,\u2019\u201d said Abdullah. \u201cSo, we\u2019d love to see justice come now for George Floyd, but we\u2019re not under any illusion. We\u2019ll continue to push for meaningful justice reform.\u201d<\/p>\n Newton Mulagusi, 18, bottom, a junior at Natick High School, and other Natick, Massachusetts, teenagers and adults lie on the ground with their hands behind their backs during a protest of police use of force on Natick Common last June. They were mirroring the position George Floyd died with the knee of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on his neck. (Photo: Daily News and Wicked Local Staff Photo\/Ken McGagh)<\/span><\/p>\n Representatives from other Black Lives Matter chapters, which often are only loosely affiliated with the national Black Lives Matter Global Network, expressed similar sentiments of\u00a0mixed hopefulness for\u00a0conviction in\u00a0Floyd\u2019s death while resolving to continue to push for large-scale change to the justice system.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll be keeping tabs on this case, definitely, but we\u2019re more focused on getting rid of the systems that allow this to happen far too often,\u201d said Marcus McDonald, founder of the Black Lives Matter\u00a0chapter in Charlotte,\u00a0in North Carolina.<\/p>\n McDonald expressed some concern that a guilty verdict in the Floyd case might cause some to think \u201cthat we won and there\u2019s no need to fight anymore, but the fight needs to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n In Sacramento, California, Black Lives Matter Sacramento\u00a0founder Tanya Faison said the Floyd trial is \u201ca chance for the courts to show us we\u2019re moving forward and can bring justice to a family that deserves it.\u201d<\/p>\n But, she added, after witnessing similar deadly interactions with police in her hometown,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m pessimistic because I\u2019ve seen so many times when a video is released and still the police get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Black Lives Matter\u00a0Global Network co-founder Patrisse Cullors released a statement saying that as the Floyd trial gets underway, \u201cwe need to understand that bigotry, white supremacy and complacency are also on trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Many activists said\u00a0the breach of the United States Capitol on Jan.\u00a06 by a mob of largely white supporters of then-President Donald Trump reflected the double standard that exists for Black Americans when it comes to confrontations with law enforcement.<\/p>\n Although five died in the Capitol riots, including one white\u00a0<\/strong>woman who was shot by Capitol Police as she tried to break through a window, the toll was noticeably low as police were overwhelmed by the mob and, as highlighted in recent Congressional hearings, lacked immediate backup from the National Guard.<\/p>\n \u201cThe spread of white supremacy and the events of Jan.\u00a06 are all connected to the Floyd case,\u201d said Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. \u201cThis case can help determine what type of democracy were are going to demand and what type of country we are going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n The memorial site where George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody on May 25, 2020, at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue is seen on Wednesday, June 3, 2020. (Photo: Jack Gruber, USA TODAY)<\/span><\/p>\n Johnson said he and other civil rights leaders will be carefully watching the procedural machinations of the Floyd trial \u201cto make sure nothing happens that weakens the ability to hold the guilty accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Key factors include a change of venue, which proved pivotal in acquitting the officers who beat King, as well as jury selection. Last fall, a judge issued a preliminary order denying a change of venue, but noted that it could be revisited \u201cif circumstances warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n Jury selection will be an equally critical component of the trial, ensuring that those seated include representatives of Minneapolis\u2019 Black community. The city’s\u00a0dominant ethnicities are white (60%), Black (19%) and Hispanic (10%), according to the most recent Census data.<\/p>\n In the end, the Floyd trial \u201cis all about the outcome,\u201d said Todd Boyd, who holds the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the study of race and popular culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there\u2019s a conviction, in some ways that\u2019s the bare minimum, that\u2019s the system doing what it\u2019s supposed to do,\u201d said Boyd. \u201cA conviction doesn\u2019t mean a party.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with Chauvin, three other officers who were present at the scene \u2014 J. Alexander Keung, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao\u2014 have been charged with aiding and abetting. If Chauvin and the others are not found guilty, Boyd said\u00a0the nation should expect a response at least commensurate with the protests sparked by Floyd’s\u00a0death.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s an acquittal, it will feel like someone is spitting in your face and humiliating you after taking this man\u2019s life,\u201d said Boyd. \u201cSo, yes, this is a big one.\u201d<\/p>\nFloyd video akin to JFK Zapruder film<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nWhite supremacy also on trial with Chauvin, activists said<\/h2>\n
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