After former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on his neck in a case that touched off protests not just in Philadelphia, but around the world, we are left to sift through the hurt and anger about racism and policing in our nation.
People elated by the verdict were seen flooding several streets around Philadelphia upon hearing the news.
Timothy Welbeck, [CAIR-Philadelphia] civil rights attorney and a professor in Temple University’s Africology Department, said the verdict brought a communal exhalation.
“A guilty verdict, while satisfying, in that it brings a measure of accountability for Derek Chauvin’s heinous actions, it still is an incomplete measure. It will never bring back George Floyd and beyond that, we have to look more broadly at the fundamental fissures in policing in America,” he said. “The system that we have is broken at the very foundation. This is one of the most grotesque illustrations of that. I’m glad to see a guilty verdict. This is what we were hoping for and anticipating. Just as the prosecution said in his closing arguments, ‘you saw what you saw, America saw what it saw. And I am relieved, that at the very least, that we have some semblance of accountability in this moment.” Read Full Article »
Photo above: The Rev. James Buck, senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Germantown, leads a social justice march down Germantown Avenue last in October 2020. — PHILADELPHIA TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO
