A Step Toward Justice

Today, we are exhaling after a jury convicted Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. A police officer has been held accountable for a horrific crime. But the verdict is no cause for celebration. Accountability cannot bring George Floyd back to his family. Convictions alone cannot right the wrongs of a broken system.

If we hadn’t had nine minutes of video and numerous eyewitnesses, we wouldn’t have even known about Mr. Floyd’s murder. He would have been yet another invisibilized statistic.

So where do we go from here? We resolve to continue putting our resources—human and financial—toward racial justice.

Efforts to support Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities enable them to be seen, which offers hope for accountability. Working together, communities and social movements can build their power and demand that the U.S. start to acknowledge its history of structural racism and dismantle the systems that perpetuate it. Only then can reconciliation and justice be attained.

Let’s breathe in and continue to work together toward this vision of justice.

Don Chen
President
Surdna Foundation