Donna Murch, a Rutgers University professor of history, is available to comment on the significance of the Derek Chauvin verdict.
“Key to understanding yesterday’s events are the successes of organizing on the ground over the past twelve years,” said March. “The #BlackLivesMatter movement/Movement for Black Life has built an infrastructure of mobilization that brought out between 16 and 25 million people on the street to protest state violence, including the killing and torture of black people by law enforcement. It is this activism that should be credited in striking a decisive blow against impunity for white for police. However, the decision’s real meaning (and consequence) will be in how it is interpreted in future efforts at structural reform, including rolling back mass incarceration, elimination of three strikes laws, expelling police unions from the AFL-CIO, and making individual officers who kill people culpable criminally and civilly, rather than forcing municipalities to pay for these crimes from desperately needed revenue for social services.”
Murch’s areas of expertise include mass incarceration and the war on drugs, and the history of Black power, civil rights and social movements in California. Her work is featured in the documentaries MLK/FBI and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.
