White Supremacy Is On Trial Across America

     Derek Chauvin's misery has just begun, but it's safe to say he'll get what he deserves. In 2020, he was fired after killing George Floyd. The day before his arrest, his wife, with whom he had no children, did the smart thing for herself and filed for divorce, which included changing her name back to her maiden one; this divorce was finalized in February 2021. Then came his April 2021 conviction and June 2021 sentence of 22.5 years in prison; he'll be eligible for release in 2035. Meanwhile, he is also facing state tax evasion and federal civil rights violations charges; the latter stems from both his killing of George Floyd and a 2017 incident in which in kneeled on a black child's neck until he went unconscious. Floyd has pleaded not guilty in both cases and faces decades more in prison, with trials set for spring 2022. Meanwhile, the other three officers who killed George Floyd (J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao) are set to go on state and federal trial in March 2022. 

     At the same time, the three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery are on trial. Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William "Roddie" Bryan Jr. chased down Ahmaud Arbery with their rusty old pickup truck, saying they suspected the jogger of being involved in a burglary. When he became too exhausted to run any further, the men assaulted him with a shotgun. When Arbery tried to defend himself from this lynching, he was horrifically murdered. I don't know if anyone has ever seen the damage a shotgun does, but it is beyond brutal. The McMichaels say they are not racist, but they drove a pickup truck with a Confederate flag and shouted the N-word at Arbery as he lay dying. They were indicted by a federal jury in April 2021 after being charged by the state in May 2020. Their state trial is set to conclude before Thanksgiving, and the federal trial will begin in February 2022. What is especially atrocious is that it took nearly three months for charges to be filed after DA Jackie Johnson, friends with Gregory McMichael, told police not to arrest the men; Johnson has since been indicted on a felony and a misdemeanor, and she faces up to six years in prison.

     I have more faith that justice will be served in this case than in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse. So far, the judge has banned the prosecution from calling the three people he shot "victims," banned the admittance of a video outside a CVS where Rittenhouse said he wished he had his AR-15 with him to kill strangers, banned the admittance of a photo showing Rittenhouse wearing a "Free As Fuck" t-shirt and making an OK sign at a bar while out on bond, called Rittenhouse's gun "cool," made a racist joke about Asian food, read through a cookie magazine while the prosecution spoke, called in a technology expert to explain how to zoom in on an iPad, had his phone go off and blare a Trump ring tone, and told the jury to give a defense witness a round of applause, for starters. The prosecution hasn't exactly done a good job, either: they made their case on the fact that Rittenhouse played Call of Duty and didn't mention the fact that the mother dropped her 17-year-old son off across state lines with an illegal rifle once. He'll get off. The defense has rested their case, and we have to prepare for his acquittal at any moment. If this turns out to be true, our next step needs to be federal weapons charges for Rittenhouse, child endangerment charges for his mother, and the end of this biased judge's career.

     Meanwhile, we are still in the early stages of the criminal process for the three officers and two paramedics charged with manslaughter for the killing of Elijah McClain in Colorado; more on this is expected in 2022. The criminal court system is not the only big venue for holding white supremacists accountable. Right now, the organizers of the Unite The Right Rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville back in 2017 are defending themselves from civil lawsuits that could (and, if history and legal precedent have any bearing here, most likely will) bankrupt them. 

     2020 made history because of the tens of millions of people who took to the streets to fight white supremacy. 2021 and 2022, however, will be equally historic. Right now, white supremacy is on trial in America.