I recently read a post of the granddaughter of a 79-year old Civil Rights veteran who lamented, “They used teargas on us back in the day! And they used it again last night!” It does seem as though it was just yesterday, and feels as though the vu was deja all over again.

After the Emancipation Proclamation the freed people were supposedly given 40 acres and a mule, BUT WHAT HAS CHANGED? Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954 did away with separate but equal in education, AND WHAT HAS CHANGED? Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 outlawing discrimination based on color, religion, sex, and national origin, AND WHAT HAS CHANGED? We elected an African American president in 2008, AND WHAT HAS CHANGED? Has anything, really?

The method of choice to kill African American males from early on most frequently was lynching, though death was wrought by other means as well. Over the years the means have changed, but it is still lynching. That was what we witnessed in the murder of George Floyd, a public lynching perpetrated by an officer of the law. Deaths of African American males at the hands of the police has happened across the country, and in Minneapolis a number of times in recent years, the murder of Mr. Floyd being the third since 2016. In that year Philando Castile, an African American was killed by a white officer, and charges of 2^nd degree manslaughter ultimately led to a not guilty verdict – the white officer was exonerated. In 2017 a white woman, Justine Damond, was killed by a Somali-American officer who was convicted of 3^rd degree murder and is serving a prison sentence. In 2018 African American Thurman Blevins was killed by a white officer and no charges were filed, lethal force having been deemed a legitimate use. George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police puts in stark and vivid detail the plight of unarmed African American males in too many cities today.

Lynching is not too harsh a word to describe what we all witnessed in the video of Mr. Floyd’s murder. And to keep all this in context, the death of Ms. Damond at the hands of an officer of color fits well into this whole narrative because that was a classic case of a white woman assaulted and killed by a black man who happened to be a police officer, so of course there would be a conviction of the black officer. NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

However, Minneapolis, you have an opportunity to do something right in the aftermath of Mr. Floyd’s death. You have the world’s stage, and you can write the ending to George Floyd’s death in a way that alters the legacy of the question WHAT HAS CHANGED? The city can right the “rules of the system” in such a way that it begins a new day of “To Serve and Protect,” to have equal protection of the law mean something and include everyone. You can cast hope upon the waters and rebuild the city bringing it up to the high ideals that all lives matter. Minneapolis, you can do this. You can do so much better. The times and humanity demand it. The pen is in your hands…