Dear John,

What happened to George Floyd -- and too many other Black folks in America -- is bigger than any one cop being convicted. Training is essential and diversity is imperative, but so are convictions for all of these deaths at the hands of law enforcement. That is accountability.

From slavery, to Jim Crow, to redlining, to mass incarceration, to over-policing -- this country has experienced a centuries-long systematic campaign to dehumanize and subjugate Black people. Today’s news is one more page in a painful, 400-year long history.

But what I hope is different this time, John, is where we go from here.

We must not mistake the conviction of one police officer for the conviction of a centuries-old system of institutional violence towards our communities.

When the police kill an unarmed Black person in the streets like an animal, they need to be charged, convicted and incarcerated.

More than that, we need to upend the systems of discrimination that allow law enforcement officers to murder us with near impunity.

We owe it to the families of every Black life taken too soon -- Oscar Grant, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, Ronell Diangelo, Mario Woods, and many others -- to hold officers accountable for the violence they exact on the Black community and to build a world where bigoted police violence is no longer a foregone conclusion.

I know we are angry. I know we are hurt. I know that this verdict won’t return George Floyd to his family.

What we can do in the face of this continued injustice is to come together as a community, to keep up our resilience as we have for generations before us, and continue to fight for the policies that will keep our communities safe from further violence.

We will continue to march in the streets, we will continue to fight for effective policy reforms, and we will continue to organize our communities and build power amongst each other to protect Black and Brown bodies for generations to come.

There’s so much more work ahead of us -- let’s get to it.

In solidarity,
Shamann Walton