Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin listens as the verdict is read in his trial for the 2020 death of George Floyd, Tuesday, April 20, 2021, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. (Court TV via AP, Pool)
Guilty.
Guilty.
Nearly one year after Darnella Frazier, then a teenager, stopped and filmed the final minutes of George Floyd’s life, a nation watched a livestream of three verdicts read out in steady succession. Derek Chauvin will spend up to 40 years in prison for murdering Mr. Floyd.
The images of Chauvin’s eyes darting around the room above his mask as he heard his verdict read, the shot of him walking off camera in handcuffs, the push notifications, the social media feed refreshing. What did it all evoke?
At NEC, a concert to pay tribute to Coretta Scott King, and to many, many others
By Bill Beuttler Globe correspondent,Updated February 18, 2021, 4:01 p.m.
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Naledi Masilo leads the singing of Lift Every Voice and Sing at the 2020 Coretta Scott King tribute concert at New England Conservatory. Masilo will also perform at this year s virtual event.New England Conservatory
When New England Conservatoryâs Black Student Union honors alumna Coretta Scott King with a concert Feb. 25, theyâll also be remembering âall the people we lost this year,â says Zoe Cagan, a classical flutist and chair of the BSU.
George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Andres Guardado.
For months this summer, these Black and brown faces looked out on us from the boarded-up windows of businesses in Venice, spray-painted on plywood and awaiting riots that never came. Every day, they reminded us as if we could forget of the trauma that police brutality inflicted upon our nation this year.
That these images of the dead are now gone, discarded with the plywood as life has hobbled back toward normal, serves as a reminder, too: Turning a moment into a movement is hard, but not half as hard as sustaining it.
Taking to the streets against police brutality and racial injustice in early June seemed like a natural reaction to the searing video of Floyd. What ethical, empathic human being wouldn’t rise up in anger after watching this Black man die on a Minneapolis sidewalk, his neck under the knee of a white cop who couldn’t have cared less about Floyd’s pleas for help? Who wouldn’t take a knee in solidarity after