Justicia para George Floyd – Hispanic L.A.

On May 25, 2020, for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, Derek Chauvin held, with the full weight of his body, his knee on the neck of a man, causing death.

The victim begged, cried, tried to scream before suffocating to death.

It was in broad daylight, in public, on the streets of Minneapolis. , and filmed by spectators.

The Chauvin trial is only now beginning. The expectation across the nation is immense.

Chauvin was a cop, and he’s white. The victim was African American.

When George Perry Floyd Jr. died, he was 46 years old. He was born on October 14, 1973 in North Carolina. He had five children with his fiancee, Courtney Rose. He went to South Florida State College and Texas A&M University, which he left to work as a truck driver, security guard, and rapper. He had served several prison terms, until 2012.

A cashier at a store claimed that he had given him a counterfeit $ 20 bill and called the police. Four policemen who did not know him surrounded him.

Chauvin, initially arrested, has been free on bail since October 7.

Chauvin’s trial began with the presentation of the prosecution and the first witnesses. The one of his three companions will be in August.

Floyd’s death sparked a series of mass protests across the country, mainly by African Americans, fed up with being once again the targets of police violence.

It is not only Chauvin and his comrades who are on trial. The whole country is, because of its history of racism and discrimination that began in slavery, followed with Jim Crow laws and segregation and continues. Our police system is where such atrocities are still allowed.

It is worth asking if Chauvin would be in the dock if it weren’t for the fact that his act was made public.

Let’s not forget the other police killings of defenseless African Americans since 2014: Eric Garner; Michael Brown; Tamir Rice, 12 years old; Walter Scott; Alton Sterling; Philando Castile; Stephon Clark, and a woman, Breonna Taylor.

On Friday, the judge who presides over the proceedings and who had rejected the defense’s request to move the trial to another city, did allow him to inform the jury, as evidence, that the victim was arrested in 2019.

As evidence of what?

The defense of the policeman, as has happened many times, seeks to denigrate the victim, as if he were guilty of his own death.

The eyes of the country are on Derek Chauvin’s trial. The facts are incontestable. Whatever the extenuating circumstances, there must be justice, and an appropriate conviction, to challenge abuses by the police force.