The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis
sent shockwaves around the world and sparked a new chapter in the movement for racial justice.
It was almost a year ago but it took a jury just a day to convict Derek Chauvin of murder.
Before the verdict, I came to the city to meet some of the people involved in that movement
and to try to understand whether justice could really be delivered.
State violence against communities of colour is a daily reality in America.
The day I got here, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old unarmed black man,
was shot and killed by a white police officer who claimed she mistook her gun for a taser.
Anywhere but Washington has focused on formal politics, electoral politics really,
but there are of course many different types of politics and there's arguably nothing more
political than what is happening right now in Brooklyn Centre and in downtown Minneapolis.
As long as the system is still in place that killed George Floyd,
there can't be justice, there will never be justice because the only way that justice
can be had is by having no more George Floyds and we are,
however many months or weeks into the trial,
however many months since the death of George Floyd and we already have more
black bodies that have piled up.
I would say the reason that I do this mostly is for the families.
All right, let's move back.
The next morning, Daunte Wright's family held a press conference at a nearby church.
Y'all see the difference?
This is a taser, this is a taser!
But no, my nephew was killed with this!
A Glock.
But the Wright family and the Floyd family
were tied together not just by grief and trauma but by connections they hadn't previously realised.
George Floyd's girlfriend actually
taught my son at Edison and she remembered him playing basketball and she remembered him
just being that smiley, goofy kid and it was just very emotional and it was
so sad that we had to meet that way and that our family's connected in that way.
But trauma has a ripple effect.
Christopher Martin, one of nine eyewitnesses to testify
in the Chauvin trial was just 18 when he took an alleged counterfeit 20 bill from George Floyd
which triggered his interaction with police.
Did you think that bill might not be legitimate?
I didn't.
So what did you decide to do?
I took it anyways and I was planning to
just put it on my tab until I second guessed myself and then I eventually told my manager.
The crazy thing about it too was like, earlier in the day as you saw in the video, like,
it was just a normal day for us, like, we're all joking around, everybody was happy and then it
just went downhill from there.
There's a lot of things in this life that you have no control of
but it's even worse when it's right in front of you.
and, you know, you just wish you could take back the decisions you made.
When you've seen Chauvin's
defense attorney try and characterise the people who witnessed this as being like, an aggressive
crowd that were putting him off his job and that sort of thing,
and you were there you were part of that crowd.
What has that made you think?
It proves that they don't really have much to go on
because as you've seen in the videos, if you watch any of the trial,
when the crowd had first gathered, they were very respectful and they were very calm.
No matter how aggressive they got, none of them intervened.
Get on the sidewalk.
A lot of people who testified that in that particular period
of the trial have articulated feelings of survivor's guilt and I think you spoke a
bit about that as well, not using that phrase but about guilt that you feel.
Just talk to me about that and how you kind of dealt with that.
Well, I didn't deal with it, I actually just allowed myself
to feel guilty for a very long time before the trial happened,
I just kept on replaying that decision in my head, what if I would have just told him not to
that he couldn't buy the cigarettes ...
But as the trial happened and more and more as I step back,
and assess the situation, I can realise that the only person responsible is Derek Chauvin.
There was a time when seeing armed national guard troops on the streets
of major American cities was shocking.
It's not so much anymore because it's happening so frequently, I think it just shows to
you how tense people are in the city at the moment
waiting for a verdict that's going to happen just a block away.
Outside the fortified courthouse, I met an activist who goes by the name of Aesthetics.
She's part of a small group of protesters who have been outside every day of the trial.
She left her job and her home in California after Floyd's death
and has been on the road ever since.
Just talk to me a bit about how the death of George Floyd changed you.
I told everybody I was a bar manager in Napa, California, like, you know what I'm saying?
I'm far from an activist or revolutionary, nothing
but when George Floyd died, it changed my life because
that videotape, I was like, what?
But then when I heard about Breonna Taylor that's what broke me.
May 29th, I left my home and I never went back.
This is so important to me that I felt like my ancestors woke me up in 2020.
I had to go figure out the truth across the United States so I just
took a one-way ticket and I've been on a one-way lifestyle ever since.
Aesthetics is one of many independent activists in the city.
The movement is centred at the intersection where George Floyd died.
Now, community members have created an autonomous zone here,
renamed George Floyd Square.
Brandon, who iId met in Brooklyn Centre, was performing when I came to visit.
And no matter how they try to lie on you, they always keep an eye on you,
tell it too loud and they might spy on you,
but never let your truth die on you, live it, breathe it and pass it on to future generations
because with our truth comes our liberation, isn't that amazing?
Talk to me about why it's important to have art, to have creativity
back in this space?
This space, I felt like it was important because it is a place of trauma
but it is also a a place of growth and healing and of progress.
It almost shows the lack of progress
and the potential for progress at the same time.
I actually feel worse if I leave these spaces,
if i'm not present in these spaces because then it's just me and my thoughts
and the trauma and I'm on my own but being with these people, being with the people
that i know would ride for me if anything were to happen, that's what makes me feel better and
that's what these spaces kind of are for.
'After 45 witnesses and 14 days of testimony, tonight Derek Chauvin's fate
is in the hands of the jury.'
Dear God, we've suffered the pains of family
but we are, we believe at a reflection point where this country must come to terms with those that
feel that blue uniforms makes them above the law
and blue jeans makes them subject to the law.
Amen. – Amen.
Just as closing arguments ended, I met Justin Miller, an attorney representing
the Floyd family who had been in court with them, watching the trial come to a close.
This case has come to symbolise so many things for different people around the world,
I mean, you're involved in this case as a lawyer representing the family,
just talk to me about what it personally means for you.
I mean, as a lawyer, I think that we're making history, right?
Changing the way that police handle their business,
the way that the justice system handles police when they do wrong,
the way black people are viewed by the country and by police
but also as a Black American, I know the significance
because I feel the exact same feelings that every Black American does
when the police pulls you over.
You don't know if you're going to survive that encounter, you don't know if you're going to end
up a hashtag, so hopefully this changes a little bit of that narrative and, you know, allows some
people to breathe a little bit better when they have those interactions with police.
So we've just heard that the verdict in this trial
is about to come down so we're on our way back to the George Floyd Memorial square
where we've heard there's a crowd of people who are waiting to hear what happens.
Emotions are already running very high a lot of very nervous people and people who
come out spontaneously to be here at the moment this verdict is delivered.
Meanwhile outside the courthouse,
Floyd's girlfriend Courtney Ross was speaking to the press,
No, no, I can't say that I've ever trusted it
but today I do believe
that it is going to serve us right,
it's going to serve its people today and we're going to start
to make some changes.
'Members of the jury, I will now read the verdicts
as they will appear on the permanent records of the Fourth Judicial District.'
'We the jury in the above entitled matter has to count one
unintentional second-degree murder while
committing a felony, find the defendant guilty.'
Guilty in all three counts! Guilty in all three counts!
This is the beginning of the grieving process so all that shit that people keep telling us,
to get a job, to stop marching like we weren't just doing it for no reason.
Now, the family can freaking start to grieve.
It's relieving but until we live in a system where we see a black body getting
murdered and we're like, 'yeah, that's murder' and everyone says, 'yeah, that was murder'
then there's still work to be done.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.
I don't think I can name a point in history where a cop was actually prosecuted to the extent of
the law that warranted what they did.
So this is the first time this generation, the Daunte Wright generation,
for lack of better word, is this is the first time they're actually seeing justice.
It felt like a moment of relief and celebration, a stepping stone
perhaps for desperately needed reform.
But this is just one moment of accountability
within a system that remains fundamentally flawed.
Bridgett Floyd, George's younger sister, couldn't bring herself to be in Minneapolis for the verdict
but the day after, she described to me how it felt seeing Chauvin
taken away in handcuffs.
I wanted them to put those cuffs on his arm as tight as he had those cuffs on my brother.
So he could feel how my brother feel to have some cuffs on your arms
cuffed in the back of your back.
An officer arresting an officer,
we have nearly or never seen that.
We kind of got justice for all families.
All families that has not gotten justice in the past and those families that are going through now.
This speaks for us.
How do you want your brother to be remembered by the world?
I want him to be remembered as the person he was which was a loving, generous, kind,
gentle giant.
He meant no harm to nobody, he might have looked big
and people might have got the impression that he would, you know,
do violent things or, you know, whatever they thought
but that wasn't his heart.
His name is what they would not ever forget
and I will continue to be the change, be the legacy and be his voice.