Social advocacy group calls for the structural reforms needed to end the police assault on Black lives.

MILWAUKEE - Citizen Action of Wisconsin praises the murder conviction of George Floyd’s killer, former Minneapolis Police officer Derrick Chauvin, and calls for the structural reforms needed to end the police assault on Black lives.

“This murder conviction is a step forward and a great relief to everyone who cares about true human equality, but it must only be a start, not an exoneration of the system that made it possible,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “The downside is that the verdict required singling out one police officer while giving cover to the police department in Minneapolis (and others around the country) for the responsibility of a structurally racist system that does not truly respect Black life. The only real solution is an unwinding of the current systems of policing and mass incarceration and its replacement with a new balanced system that truly promotes community safety for everyone in America.”

“The truth is, without the over policing of Black and Brown communities, the over funding of police departments compared to nonviolent interventions, and the social and economic investments needed in low-income and marginalized communities, George Floyd would not have had to fight for his life after being accused of a petty crime. This verdict does not change what we know to be true: the deadly official violence aimed at Black people in America will not end until we uproot the whole system, root and branch, and replace it with a system that equally values all human lives, especially Black lives and the many others that are devalued by our out of control system of policing and mass incarceration.”

The whole Citizen Action of Wisconsin team supports and fights alongside George Floyd's family and the people demanding justice and accountability. But we also know that Justice is not just Chauvin's conviction. Justice would be George Floyd being alive.

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"One cannot make clear division between the innocent and the guilty. We are all involved, more or less, in the human, especially social, wrongs of our time." James Luther Adams