DPJC.org

DPJC STATEMENT REGARDING THE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD

The Dallas Peace & Justice Center unequivocally condemns the murder of George Floyd by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and three fellow officers. What began as an arrest for an alleged minor crime ended nine minutes later when Officer Chauvin squeezed the last life out of a handcuffed, face-down black man pleading for air and his mother. It was a lynching under color of law.

We at the Dallas Peace and Justice Center are appalled that it took nine days for authorities to charge Officer Chauvin with second degree murder or to charge his three fellow officers as accomplices. We are appalled too that these charges were laid only after a black state attorney general took over the case from a white district attorney who had until that point charged Chauvin with only third degree murder and had showed no inclination to charge the three accomplices at all.

We find it particularly inexcusable that Dallas’ own Police Chief Renee Hall cruelly chose to deploy a shock and awe strategy against peaceful protestors, leaving at least one black protester blinded and several others injured.

The Dallas Peace and Justice Center is an organization dedicated to the promotion of peace and justice in an often violent and unequal world. There can be no peace when people live in fear of abuse or even death at the hands of police due to their color or class. Nor can there be justice when a society disproportionately allocates its benefits to those born privileged and white and its burdens to the many who are not.

How long before we finally confront the white rage inextricably woven in our system? To make America a land where the inherent dignity and value of each human life is sacred we must collectively live our way into that better land by becoming the change we want to see. What change will you live to help make America’s many broken promises true for all? We demand justice for George Floyd.