Dear John,

We’re very glad to see Derek Chauvin held guilty for murdering George Floyd. Yesterday’s verdict, however, represents a rare exception proving the broader rule of continuing impunity for state violence. Meanwhile, Washington politicians are already spinning the verdict to excuse their own complicity with predatory policing.

An exception that proves the rule

First, the evidence of Chauvin’s casual and lethal brutality was extraordinary, and rarely available. It is the first trial in memory in which multiple officers, including a police chief, testified for the prosecution of a fellow officer. That’s in part a credit to the remarkable work of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who was the first Muslim to serve in Congress.

The extraordinary evidence also included a graphic video revealing the casual indifference with which Chauvin senselessly murdered Floyd.

Many voices embrace police body cameras, not recognizing that civilian video captured by brave grassroots journalists is far more valuable for accountability. Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd was captured and revealed by a brave 17-year-old. In how many cases does such video never become available? In how many others is the video captured, but never released?

Within hours of Chauvin’s verdict in Minneapolis, police in Columbus, OH killed 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant after she called for help in response to a fight outside her home. Authorities have released some video, ultimately proving the point that police body cameras have only limited utility as a police accountability tool. They capture the officer’s field of vision—but not all of an officer’s actions.

They also happen to frequently be conveniently malfunctioning at crucial times, and in the rare occasion they do capture evidence of wrongdoing, it has usually been a legal struggle to let the public view the footage.

As recognized by legal academics who promote civil rights like Justin Hansford at Georgetown University Law Center, police body cameras ultimately represent yet another vector for mass surveillance enabling predatory policing and reinforcing mass incarceration.

Here’s why that matters: our movements for accountability have been routinely co-opted. Every time we have forced our concerns into the political sphere, career politicians have responded with half-measures. We can’t let that bait & switch pattern continue.

How Congress shares responsibility for state violence

To finally put an end to police murders, Congress must end Qualified Immunity. It is a doctrine created by judges in the 1960s to shield officers from liability for acts including violence and murder. In case after case, Qualified Immunity has served as a barrier to justice.

Only Congress can we ensure that other cops like Chauvin face justice. Many states have sought analogous reforms, but because Qualified Immunity was created by federal judges, it will take an act of Congress to finally force police to face accountability for their acts of recurring wanton violence.

We support most of the long overdue reforms embodied in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House in 2020 before being abandoned in the Senate. Helping force Pelosi’s hand—on both it and the PRO Act to help restore labor rights—was a highlight of our 2020 campaign.

The provisions expanding police budgets and surveillance, however, must be removed. Demands for police body cameras ultimately represent a judo move by the policing-industrial complex to continue inflating police budgets & corporate profits on the backs of our communities—and innocent lives.

Beyond their complicity in policy, congressional leaders have also contributed to state violence in their politics.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has played a particularly egregious role in this respect.

After 30 years of building mass incarceration and deferring to predatory policing, Pelosi last year donned Kente cloth, and knelt in the House in a moment of theater before introducing a bill named the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. She forgot his name at the press conference, neglected to mention that it would expand police budgets and surveillance, and has continued pandering since then.

Just yesterday, in response to the verdict, Pelosi thanked George Floyd for sacrificing his life for justice.

But that’s not what happened. Pelosi cribbed her notes from the elegies of fallen civil rights leaders assassinated in a previous era. George was murdered.

His life was not “sacrificed.” It was stolen.

That’s not all.

Axios reported that “Senior Democratic...aides — who would never let their bosses say so on the record — privately told Axios the convictions have lessened pressure for change.”

Years ago, Pelosi aides downplayed the movement for black lives, counseling members of Congress to pay lip service to the movement while ignoring our policy demands.

Is she continuing her pattern of saying one thing in public, while doing another in the shadows?

A contrast that couldn’t be more clear

While Nancy Pelosi was telling her colleagues to ignore our movement for justice, we were actively demanding change both in the streets and in policy.

From 2009-2015, I helped pioneer the application of intersectionality to grassroots organizing challenging police abuses. From Hartford, CT to Berkeley, CA, my colleagues & I supported networks of activists across the country politicizing racial, religious, and ideological profiling at the local, state, and federal level.

My work challenging police surveillance continued after I left the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (now known as Defending Rights & Dissent) on the east coast to join the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. So did my writing documenting movement organizing from Baltimore (where Nancy Pelosi’s father served as Mayor long before local police murdered Freddie Gray) to St. Louis (where I grew up, and which Cori Bush now represents in Congress after helping organize protests responding to the murder of Mike Brown).

Beyond my policy record, writing, and organizing, I’ve also been a participant in the movement for black lives. I’ve taken direct action from St. Louis to Oakland, and from San Francisco to Washington, DC—where I was struck by an irate commuter in December 2014 when hedge fund lawyer Thomas Salley wielded his SUV like a battering ram to plow through a non-violent crowd in DuPont Circle.

It is disappointing to watch Pelosi’s continued career in the House, knowing how much I could help if allowed the chance to cast the votes in the House that Pelosi has refused.

But like so many other Americans who have grown unable to tolerate the continued parade of coffins, I remain committed to justice—and am grateful that you do, too.

In solidarity,

Shahid