Hundreds of Black Lives Matter advocates gather at Oakland City Hall on Monday to protest. Jesus Tellitud/Spartan Daily.
U.S. leaders gathered in a virtual town hall hosted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Wednesday, to discuss ways of approaching systemic police brutality and racism.
The town hall, which hosted nearly 40,000 viewers, was in light of the three other arresting officers being arrested and charged over George Floyd’s death.
“I’ve worked in the job with [police], so I have to ask you what in the hell were you doing?” Rep. Val Demings, a former Orlando police chief, said in the conference directing it toward the officers involved.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced before the news conference that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes which resulted in his death, had his charges upgraded.
Chauvin now faces unintentional second-degree murder while commiting a felony, after he was formally charged with third-degree murder.
Ellison said former Minneapolis police officers Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, who helped restrain Floyd, and Tou Thao, who didn’t act as bystanders told him to check Floyd’s pulse, are being arrested and charged with aiding and abetting unintentional second-degree manslaughter.
Prior to Ellison’s decision, protestors gathered at the scene of the crime Wednesday and chanted, “The world is watching,” as Ben Crump, lead attorney for Floyd family, demanded that justice officials do their job.
“We are demanding justice based on the autopsy findings, but more importantly what the world has seen with its eyes which it cannot unsee,” Crump said.
He said America can’t have separate justice systems for white people and Black people.
While Ellison said he wasn’t influenced by public pressure to make a decision, he said he understands America’s skepticism that justice will be served for Floyd.
“Trust is historically not holding,” Ellison said. “But we can’t control the past. All we can do is take the case we have in front of us now and do our good faith best to bring justice to the situation and we will.”
Rep. Val Demings commended Ellison on the charges brought against all four officers in the virtual town hall and said she believes change could emerge through this case because of people of all colors uniting together.
She said the difference between other civil rights movements and this one is that before it’s felt as if police misconduct or racial injustice is a Black problem, but the coming together of other minorities and some white people makes things seem different.
“They look different now because of what we have seen persons of all ages from all colors backgrounds taking to the streets in cities throughout this nation to express their displeasure and send out a strong message that enough is enough,” Demings said.
She also called for change at the federal, state and local level and said it could come in the form of police departments looking like its community, reviewing deescalation policies and banning restraints above the shoulders.
“The idea of peace is not the absence of violence, but the presence of justice,” Sen. Cory Booker said.
Booker announced his partnership with Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Karen Bass, of the 37th district of California, to form a vision for new reform laws including data collection, new levels of accountability for police officers and restraint practices.
“We have work to do,” Booker said. “To let this moment go past and not make sure this is a sustained movement, where we’re actually fighting for specific legislative policing, to me would be tragic.”
Booker said he believes continued protests, demonstrations and voting could create one of the biggest turns for the progressive community.
Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, closed the town hall with an emphasis on voting.
“In this democracy, our disputes are settled at the polling place and if we don’t take that seriously, we will find ourselves reacting to bad public policy and bad decisions by policymakers that cause us more pain than necessary,” Johnson said.
He said no magic demonstration will change the systemic racism that’s long been embedded in U.S. history, but he believes voting can help make change.
“We’ve marched and we’ve demonstrated and now those four officers are now locked up,” Johnson said. ” The trial to come, but now we need to move towards systemic solutions to the systemic problems and it starts in November at the polling place.”