Relief. Now, Onto Justice

By Larry Marx, CEO, The Children’s Agenda

A conviction in the murder of George Floyd is a tremendous relief when compared to the alternative.  We hope that the Floyd family, including his 7 year-old daughter Gianna, growing up now without her father, can find a measure of peace in the verdict.

But millions of people around the world didn’t march after George Floyd’s murder just for a particular verdict.  Individual trials don’t break systems of oppression.  And history is replete with an overwhelming number of failures in our criminal justice system and from other trials that resulted in different outcomes, where structural racism reigns sovereign and with impunity.  That has been the fuel for change since George Floyd’s murder, and the long line of men and women and non-binary people – every one of them someone’s child and beloved family member — before and now since. 

We must imagine – and build – a world where public safety upholds the lives and dignity of all Black people, prenatally to old age.  That’s a world where racism isn’t a public health crisis for Black mothers in childbirth, or for Black and brown babies, children and adults.  It’s a world where children of color aren’t disproportionately separated from their families in foster care, and where families of color aren’t disproportionately involved with Child Protective Services.  Where children of all races learn to be their best selves in the best educational systems anyone could hope for with their own child.  That is what justice means — all of it — and it is what The Children’s Agenda is dedicated to achieving.