The Christian Science Monitor

With trial over, what next for racial justice?

Protesters comfort each other outside the Hennepin County Government Center as a guilty verdict is announced in Derek Chauvin's trial on April 20, 2021, in Minneapolis.

There have been other moments of police violence against Black men captured on video over the past few years.

As part of a new moment in human history when nearly everyone is equipped with video-recording phones, witnesses – and sometimes even the mandated clip-on cameras of police officers themselves – have captured the violent deaths of men such as Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Rayshard Brooks.    

“Say their names” became a rallying cry, and such videos, especially, helped launch Black Lives Matter, organized and led by a younger generation of Black Americans, who demanded the nation address its history of racial injustice with mass protests not seen since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The name George Floyd, however, resonated globally, and from the start there appeared to be something different about the impact of the 9 1/2 minutes of footage that captured his murder at the corner of 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis.

“Just a human, just a man, lying on the pavement being pressed upon, desperately crying out,” said prosecution team member Steve Schleicher in his final arguments Monday. “A grown man, crying out for

Maryland revokes police bill of rightsIn Houston’s Third Ward“The whole country listening”

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