\u201cSometimes it felt like we were even smaller than a David facing Goliath,\u201d said co-director Melina Abdullah of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. \u201cThere were times when we\u2019d demonstrate and there\u2019d be, like, five of us, and we felt like it might be insurmountable. But what the last year has taught me that there are moments of awakening where the entire world wakes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she watched the verdict at home with her kids, Abdullah said her emotions\u00a0took her by surprise: Not just relief and elation, but a sense of faith.\u00a0in the people who she said had helped make it possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an affirmation of the work that\u2019s been put in over the last year,\u201d she said. \u201cSince the moment George Floyd\u2019s life was stolen, people have taken to the streets and issued demands, and what we have seen in this moment is that that bears fruit, that organizing works. We can not only reform but transform the system.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Brianna Raine (left) and her mother Marvalyn Raine, both of Chicago, embrace outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis immediately after the verdict was announced. (Photo: Mike Thompson\/USA TODAY)<\/span><\/p>\n As the news broke in New York City\u2019s Union Square, co-founder Chivona Newsome of Black Lives Matter Greater New York had a similar reaction.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to feel hopeless,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the George Floyd movement solidified everything I believe: That the power truly belongs to the people. To every single activist, anyone who went to a rally or blacked out their social media: Know that you are powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n Cries of \u201cGuilty! Guilty!\u201d swelled around her as she spoke.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, a Black life truly mattered,\u201d Newsome said. \u201cIt showed the police that they can\u2019t go on killing, that they can no longer hide behind a badge.\u201d<\/p>\n In Rhode Island, Ray Rickman watched from his couch and waited for that very long hour before the verdicts were read, frightened the jury would serve up a half-serving of justice and fail to convict Chauvin of the most serious charge of second-degree murder.<\/p>\n ‘We are able to breathe again’:: <\/strong>George Floyd’s family relieved, thankful for guilty verdict against Derek Chauvin.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd when the judge read it \u2014 guilty \u2014 I got tears in my eyes,\u201d said Rickman, executive director of Stages of Freedom, an organization supporting Black youth through cultural activities in Providence, Rhode Island.\u00a0\u201cThis is an individual going to jail, but the truth is that this is a blessing for the nation. We\u2019ve seen this a hundred times \u2013 police don\u2019t get indicted, much less go to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Rickman said the decision represents a small but consequential rupture in the proverbial Blue Line that cuts through a broken criminal justice system.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe the American people have been educated that it\u2019s not okay for cops to kill someone just because they feel like it,\u201d Rickman said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what George Floyd has done for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Adi Armour, 50, cries while watching the verdict being read on CNN on Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at Gees Clipper in Milwaukee. Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder and manslaughter in George Floyd death ignited world wide protest. (Photo: Angela Peterson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel\/USA TODAY Network)<\/span><\/p>\n Donna Murch, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real victory here is not the incarceration of Derek Chauvin,\u201d Murch said. \u201cPutting another person in a cage is not how we change the world. But stopping the killings of Black people with complete impunity, saying that Black lives matter \u2014 this sends that signal.\u201d<\/p>\n For Cephus \u201cUncle Bobby\u201d Johnson, whose 22-year-old nephew, Oscar Grant, was killed in 2009 by a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer who said he mistook his gun for his Taser, the moment was in many ways a release.<\/p>\n \u201cOh man, I was full of emotions,\u201d said Johnson, who helped found Love Not Blood Campaign, a police reform advocacy agency in Oakland, California, after Grant’s death. \u201cI\u2019m extremely glad that it came down the way it came down, and I\u2019m hopeful that some changes are finally beginning to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: <\/strong>What are the odds Derek Chauvin is successful in appeal of guilty verdict in George Floyd murder?<\/span><\/p>\n A not-guilty verdict, he said, would have prolonged the continued implosion of a nation he sees divided among racial lines.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pain that Black people have been enduring for years without feeling that justice was done,\u201d he said. \u201cThis allows people to take a breath and have some hope that maybe the tide is turning, that police officers who witness this will act in a more conscionable way. But we still have a way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n So despite that major step, activists and leaders cautioned that the path toward racial justice remains long.<\/p>\n \u201cThis gives us some hope for the movement,\u201d said Utah State Representative Sandra Hollins, a Democrat. \u201cBut we still have a lot of fighting to do. There\u2019s still a number of people out there who are hashtags, who need justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Hollins, Utah\u2019s first Black female representative, had watched the verdict from her kitchen table with her husband and daughter, so overcome at the outcome that she teared up, her anxiety over the case relieved. In 2018, she sponsored a state bill in 2018 to remove references to slavery from the constitution, an effort that intensified as protests raged around the country last summer and passed overwhelmingly as a ballot measure in November.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/04\/21\/USAT\/a93f9c9f-de1a-455d-b4de-97cd60ad7f13-XXX_MJS_Chauvin_verdict_1_99502410.jpg?crop=5184,3456,x0,y0&width=540&height=&fit=bounds&auto=webp\")
<\/p>\n‘We still have a lot of fighting\u00a0to do’<\/h2>\n