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Dear Friend,

After three and a half days of jury deliberation, Kyle Rittenhouse has
been acquitted of all five charges in the murder of two unarmed men and
the shooting injury of a third during a Black Lives Matter protest in
Kenosha, Wisconsin last year.

Following the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man –– who was left
paralyzed from the waist down, by a white police officer, protest ensued
in Kenosha, where Rittenhouse, 17-years-old at the time, brandished a
AR-15-style rifle and fatally shot Anthony Huber, 26, and 36-year-old
Joseph Rosenbaum.

Stark and well documented disparities in our criminal justice system
indicate that the outcome of the trial would very likely look different
had Rittenhouse been a Black man.

Further aggravating the repeated pattern of racial disparities where
courts treat white men on trial, such as Dylan Roof, more leniently,
Judge Schroeder insisted on biased language in the courtroom by refusing
to allow those who were killed to be called "victims," but allowing them
to be called "rioters'' and "looters". Judge Schroeder demonstrated the
importance of language, and misused his authority to undermine
accountability for these brutal killings.

The verdict comes in the midst of the trial of another white male who
murdered Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and eight years after George
Zimmerman, in the guise of a vigilante, was acquitted of the murder of
Travon Martin, another young black man. The intersection of this
resurgence of white extremist political violence and white supremacy,
and the ensuing lack of accountability, represent a pattern that strains
and damages the legitimacy of our institutions. This pattern threatens
our democracy, while allowing the murders of Black and brown people and
their allies. It further proves that the current justice system is far
from just, and is designed to work against Black and brown people time
and time again.

Race Forward continues to call for accountability and a completely
transformed justice system that moves us towards a true democracy that
ensures the rights and lives of all people are respected.

Sincerely,

The Race Forward Team

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