It should not take the world witnessing the last nine minutes and 42 seconds of George Floyd’s life for us to declare that racism and police brutality are ending too many lives and causing trauma for too many Black Americans. While today’s verdict is a step, justice will not be fully served until we acknowledge the ongoing trauma of structural, systemic, and overt racism. It is our hope that today’s guilty verdict be the spark of a deep and true reckoning that compels us to transform systems so that individuals and communities can heal and thrive.
