Derek Chauvin is a Human.
It’s easy to look at the video from 5/25/2020 and see Derek Chauvin as a clear perpetrator.
He is cis gendered.
He is heterosexual.
He is white. (The majority group in Minnesota.)
He is male. (A hated minority group in Minnesota.)
He sees things from his own perspective.
He is in a uniform associated with Universal Patriarchal Systemic Racism.
On April, 20th 2021, one year to the day of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Lombardo Decision affirming the constitutional validity of deadly neck restraints, Derek Chauvin was found guilty.
A curious coincidence, perhaps worthy of consideration.
“One year to the day the Court sided with law enforcement and the City, affirming that choking a man to death under your knee with your coworkers was legal if you were a cop, a cop was convicted for doing it.”
While the Lombardo Decision is the current law of the land, the decision itself is still in legal limbo.
Why the media has ignored this is beyond me as I personally delivered copies of this decision to every major news outlet that covered the trial in Minneapolis.
Printed and electronically. I have first hand knowledge this was distributed to every mainstream media outlet in the Hennepin County Media Business Center. They were all aware of it.
Because it’s so easy to view Derek Chauvin as a clear perpetrator, humans are unable to see George Floyd as responsible in any way.
If you take personal agency away from George Floyd (public iconography, golden casket, etc.) it’s very easy to not care whether Derek Chauvin received a fair trial.
After all, Chauvin is the clear image of the cis, white, male, chauvinist, pig that Boomers and the Children of Boomers have blamed for everything for decades.
Mrs. Chauvin, who was coincidentally crowned Mrs. Minnesota 2018, said in several interviews that her husband was exactly the man she was looking for after her first divorce.
If we return some of George Floyd’s agency, it may be more possible to view Derek Chauvin’s charges and trial as less than ideal due process.
Perhaps considering Chauvin’s two children and his wife Kellie Chauvin, we could have compassion for a cop who’s working on Memorial Day during the pandemic.
We might further add that the restraint was in the Minneapolis Police manual and that Chauvin had never been reprimanded for using it before. It might be further considered that this restraint had been policy, despite its use resulting in the death of David Smith at the Downtown YMCA.
Some people will never be able to see that and we have to be okay with that, humans want to see a clear perpetrator and a perfect victim. We are not always going to agree.
Regardless of whether or not Chauvin received due process, we can all agree that there are due problems here in Minnesota.
It’s also worth mentioning that the current law of the land is that the police can choke a man to death under their knee if they feel like it.
Perhaps the Lombardo Decision should be further interrogated.
Whether you see Floyd or Chauvin as hero or villain, victim or perpetrator, it’s disturbing that this policing tactic is still the law of the land.
Mrs. Lombardo watched the video of her son in tears. We were shocked by the video of George Floyd, and yet barely an alarm bell was rung when the video of Tony Timpa’s death in Dallas went semi-viral in 2016.
One wonders if a woman were killed in this way if it would generate enough outrage for the city to finally make a change in policy.
Ashli Babbit and Justine Damond were both killed by police and counter ambush training has still not been a part of the national conversation. So maybe not.
This series explores things that don’t get said and highlights some dangerous Government and Corporate policies and directives that somehow don’t generate outrage.
The Quiet Parts in Writing.
