WASHINGTON — In response to a jury verdict that found Derek Chauvin guilty of murder, Rep. Jamaal Bowman issued the following statement:

“Last summer, the entire world watched in horror as video footage emerged clearly showing that a white police officer murdered a Black man, George Floyd, in broad daylight. It speaks to the inherent unfairness and injustice of our criminal justice system that despite the clarity of the evidence, we waited with held breath anyway to see if there would be any accountability at all. I feel relieved, but I shouldn’t have to.

“One guilty verdict is more accountability than Trayvon Martin’s family got, and it’s more than Breonna Taylor’s family got. I’m heartened to see that the protests and uprisings that we’ve seen over the past few years, unparalleled in American history since the Civil Rights Movement, is changing hearts and minds and helped to make this verdict possible. 

“But accountability is only the first step towards justice. Nothing will ever bring back George Floyd, or any of the thousands of others we have lost to racist police violence. We have to break the cycle of structural racism, and build a truly just society for all of us. What we badly need in this country is a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, like what we’ve seen in other nations that have tried to turn the page on injustice. We need a real, honest, and national conversation about racism in America, because the status quo is a crisis for too many Black and brown people who are losing their lives every single day.”

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