Alliance statement on Chauvin verdict

Photo: Mural on Lake Street painted by Alliance organizer Ricardo Perez and others during the George Floyd uprising in 2020

After weeks of anxiety and dread that an act of blatant and unmistakable police violence would escape meaningful consequence, the conviction of Derek Chauvin on all charges in the murder of George Floyd provided public recognition that Black lives do matter in our community.

After months of tireless organizing, mutual aid and collective care, this all-too-rare moment of accountability — in fact, a historic moment in Minnesota — provided the validation and acknowledgement of harm that is a necessary first step toward healing and repair. We cannot overlook this progress on the long road to transformative change, but we must not mistake it for justice, either.

Justice is a community where we can all breathe fully and freely. Where households of color aren’t holding their breath every single day, worried they might not be able to pay an increase in rent, that they might miss the one bus that will get them to their job on time, or that their son or daughter might be the next fatal target of police profiling just driving to the grocery store.

As coalition organizers working toward equitable housing, transit and economic development, we know that justice is due to communities of color who have survived generations of systemic extraction and exclusion from wealth, power and property.

We believe that true safety will come, not from more police or better policing, but from an equitable and reparative distribution of resources and livable neighborhoods — neighborhoods where Black, Indigenous and people of color have political agency, living wages, secure homes, opportunities for ownership and can breathe fully into sacred belonging in our beloved cities.