“Let this just not be another trend”

Nesrine Malik is stating the importance of acknowledging actions outside of the courtroom that delivered some accountability of George Floyd’s death. Let’s all continue this work. On and off the mat:

“The arc of the moral universe does not bend on its own. It is bent in the right direction by protesters, campaigners, and dissenters. It was their hands that forced it towards justice last week when the former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the second-degree murder of George Floyd. We cannot celebrate and take comfort in the verdict that was meted out without acknowledging the action outside the courtroom that secured it.

The uncomfortable truth is that change comes about in ways that are disruptive and, yes, occasionally unsavoury. Those events are then sanitised, and their significance minimised, so we can maintain a naive trust in the arc of history and those who govern us. Every legal system is as flawed and institutionally skewed as the country in which it exists. In the UK and the US, it has inbuilt biases in favour of the police and those who can afford the best legal representation. Those who cannot afford it, from marginalised communities, are subject to criminalisation, becoming forever felons in the eyes of the state.

But the justice system is also sensitive to public opinion and the political environment, and its outcomes are often an interplay between external pressures and internal deficiencies. Accountability for George Floyd’s death may have been delivered in a courtroom, but it began in the streets.”

By Nesrine Malik, the Guardian