Whether Derek Chauvin is convicted or not, his trial will have an important legacy.
Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, is on trial, facing charges of manslaughter and murder for the death of George Floyd.
If his trial feels momentous, it’s because it is.
It’s been nearly a year in the making, ushered into being by nearly 365 days of activism and anger, and by the millions who chanted Floyd’s name while vowing to honor his memory.
We have seen many people killed by police. Their last moments have become familiar: A confused jumble of body camera, security, and bystander footage heavy with struggle and fear, pleading and uncertainty, the noise of shots. Security and body camera footage often possess a cold, official veneer, while bystander clips are often shot from a distance. This can create a kind of remove, as does the fact these videos often unfold quickly, dense with movement until the moment the person killed slumps and falls.
But the video of Floyd’s death was different. Millions of people across the United States and the world watched intimate cellphone footage, clear and close, of a death that was painfully slow. To watch that clip is to watch a person’s life slipping from their body a little at a time.
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We aren’t often confronted with death like that — seeing Floyd die as he did would hurt any mortal person. To relive it through this trial is to have that still-fresh wound scraped raw.
But through the pain of recollection, the trial offers a way to begin healing some of that damage. And it’s this opportunity that gives the proceedings some of the ponderous weight they possess.
What form that healing might take varies given the individual. For some, a conviction would be restorative; for others, the attention being paid to police misconduct is a reason for hope; and for others still, the trial feels full of promise — as if it could be an important step toward creating a more just existence.
Should Chauvin be acquitted and be allowed to continue on with his normal life, some would find themselves in despair, convinced that oppressive systems are impossible to change; others might resolve to devote more time and energy to activism. An acquittal, however, would invite everyone to once again question whether there ought to be any limits on police conduct — and to struggle further with how race and policing intertwine.
All this makes the Chauvin trial feel different; that, no matter the outcome, it will have a significant effect on how police are viewed, as well as how we choose to be policed. After it ends, remnants of the feelings it engendered will remain, and those feelings must be embraced as we look for ways to prevent more deaths like Floyd’s.
The Chauvin trial is a reflection of our collective grief and powerlessness
That Chauvin is on trial at all is notable.
While there’s no good national data on police killings, a database of police shootings does exist, and as Vox’s German Lopez has explained, those seldom result in prosecution: Slightly less than 2 percent of officers face manslaughter or murder charges following on-duty shootings.
“Even having an officer be placed on trial is a small victory, when you look at the lack of accountability that we have seen when police kill Black people,” Seft Hunter, director of Black-led organizing for the social justice organization Community Change, told me.
Its rarity amplifies something true of all trials: that they are rituals meant to create closure and healing. Through familiar rites, trials are meant to interrogate the past, and, if necessary, correct a wrong. And as any ritual does, the trial provides a platform for expression and for reflection.
That there was a wellspring of angst to express was evident in the testimony the prosecution’s witnesses gave. After having been sealed away for nearly a year, pain and guilt and rage and sadness came rushing out, as those who lived Floyd’s final moments alongside him were able to at last publicly release their feelings. All those watching at home who were wounded by Floyd’s death had an opportunity for release as well — to see their emotions manifested live, to share in the pain of the witnesses, and to be reminded that their feelings were valid.
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“Every time he dropped one tear, I dropped two to three,” George Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, told the Star Tribune after listening to the testimony of 61-year-old Charles McMillian, who’d tried to help Floyd during his arrest. “It was just terrible just watching him.”
McMillian wept inconsolably as he gave his testimony, so overcome after watching footage of Floyd begging for help that he was unable to speak for a moment. When he found words, all McMillian could say as he wiped away tears was, “Oh my God.”
Another witness, Christopher Martin, now 19, worked at Cup Foods, the store where Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. He told the jury he watched Floyd struggle to breathe beneath Chauvin’s knee with “disbelief and guilt. If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided.”
Darnella Frazier, 18, recorded the now-famous video of Floyd’s final moments. She too spoke of guilt, saying amid tears, “It’s been nights I’ve stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more, and not physically interacting, and not saving his life.”
Those tears, and the others shed by witnesses, were shared not just by Philonise Floyd, but by so many watching — as was the sense of helplessness. There was nothing anyone who has seen Frazier’s video could do; Floyd was already dead. There was nothing those who stood in front of Cup Foods could do; police officers were pushing them back, demanding they not interfere.
Those who have watched Floyd die, in person or on video, are unified in their despair. The trial has been yet another opportunity to grieve the loss of that life, and the loss of all the other lives taken under similar circumstances. It has created a space for collective mourning. It has also been a reminder of the erratic nature of grief, with all of its bursts of anger and melancholy and weariness. The trial has caused new traumas that will need to be addressed after it ends; this ritual may make a place to gather in grief, but it cannot, on its own, end it.
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And that is in part because the danger Floyd found himself in remains. Frazier spoke of the particular pain of seeing in Floyd her father, her brothers, cousins, uncles, and friends, saying, “I look at how that could have been one of them.” It very well could have. One 2019 study found that Black men have about a one in 1,000 chance of being killed by police.
On May 25, 2020, Floyd was that one in 1,000. But on any given day, it could be anyone else. It could be me. This trial becomes an opportunity to pause and ponder whether this sort of statistic is acceptable, to ask whether anyone should die at the hands of police and to contemplate whether Chauvin’s actions were appropriate.
Floyd used some of his final words to say that they were not, telling the officers around him, “I’m about to die today.” Chauvin’s tactics were also condemned by onlookers, ordinary people who demanded the former officer get off of Floyd before beginning to plead for him to give Floyd some relief, shouting, “He’s not moving,” and, “Check his pulse,” and, “He’s not responsive right now.” Several called the police on the police, hoping some officer might be able to get Chauvin off of Floyd and show him some compassion, even though they doubtless knew it was fruitless.
The trial exemplifies not just a collective grief but also a collective powerlessness. What can we do to stop this from happening now, tomorrow, ever again? It can feel as though the public has no control over the police, and that the police have absolute control over the public. But that dynamic must be altered in order to ensure deaths like George Floyd’s don’t continue to happen. There have been loud calls for change, and from them have come nascent but promising plans for true reform.
The Chauvin trial is a reminder of the burgeoning reform movement
The Chauvin trial comes as the United States has reflected more deeply in the past year on how race and policing are intertwined, reflection that has been a direct result of Floyd’s death.
The protests animated by the horrifying video of Floyd’s death were massive — early estimates suggested that as many as 26 million people participated — and brought together a broad coalition of identities.
As they progressed, polling found Americans becoming more contemplative about race; a Democracy Fund/UCLA Nationscape poll taken the week after Floyd’s death found that 96 percent of Americans believed Black Americans face racial discrimination. A Washington Post/George Mason poll taken around the same time found that 81 percent of Americans believed the police need to make changes to ensure all Americans were treated equally by law enforcement.
Whether these opinions mark a permanent change or are fleeting remains to be seen. More recent data is inconclusive. For example, while a Vox/Data for Progress poll taken April 2 to April 5, 2021, found 52 percent of likely voters believe police officers are more likely to use deadly force against Black Americans, a USA Today/Ipsos poll taken March 1–2 found that same percentage of Americans believe police misconduct is composed of “isolated incidents by a few officers.”
That reflection happened at all, though, has created conditions in which change does feel possible. Now, Ati, the president of the social justice group By Any Means Necessary, told me, “there’s a fire ignited in this nation. … I hate that it had to take the continual deaths of Black and brown people, but I do believe that we’re making progress in the right direction.”
This new reality is evident in the trial itself. The prosecution’s case turns in part on clarifying the role racism played not just in Floyd’s death but in how the defense usually portrays Black victims: It brought Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, to the stand to provide a nuanced understanding of the complexities of addiction in a manner that attempted to rebut the stereotypes surrounding Black drug addicts; it has had Black witnesses who refused to allow themselves to be cast as angry and out of control; and it has worked hard to humanize the man who died, beyond the racist tropes the defense has employed.
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Bowling Green State University criminal justice professor and former police officer Philip Matthew Stinson once told me that “many, many police officers are afraid of Black people.” Body camera footage played during the trial certainly shows officers treating Floyd as a danger, with former police officer Thomas Lane pointing a gun at him shortly after approaching his vehicle, and telling him to “Put your fucking hands up right now.” Later, three officers wrestled him to the ground as he’s in handcuffs and speculate — as the officers who beat Rodney King incorrectly did 30 years ago — that “He’s gotta be on something … PCP or something.”
Thus far, the defense has worked to suggest that Chauvin’s use of force might be justified and that even a handcuffed suspect might still pose a threat to officers’ safety. But in the telling of Ross and the other witnesses, Floyd was not a scary Black man requiring an aggressive response, but a man like any other — someone deserving of aid, not violence.
Most people want those in distress to get aid — a desire that is at the core of the movement to defund the police. Defunding was a somewhat niche concept before Floyd died, and even as it became a rallying cry during 2020’s protests, many rejected it as something that sounded ridiculous.
Now, however, with some time and understanding, there appears to be broad support for the idea — that money should be subtracted from police department budgets and added to the budgets of departments providing social and health services — even if many still don’t like the term.
The recent Vox/Data for Progress poll, for instance, found 63 percent of respondents saying they support moving some money from police departments to other groups tasked with handling things like mental health crises or addiction. Such a reallocation of resources could also conceivably mean giving business owners someone else to call when they suspect a customer is trying to buy something with a fake $20 bill — rather than an armed police officer.
This shift in thinking has already led to change in the wake of Floyd’s death. A number of cities have begun experimentation into what defunding — and other structural police reforms — might look like.
Los Angeles voters approved a defund measure in the 2020 election, and the city council there recently approved the transfer of $32 million to programs that provide alternatives to policing as well as public health initiatives. Baltimore cut $22 million from its police budget, hoping to fund community programming and spur economic development; the city’s new mayor has said he wants to go further in thinking of ways to “decrease our dependency on policing.” Other cities, including Las Vegas, Austin, New Orleans, and Seattle, have reduced their budgets as well.
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Some cities have decided to completely reimagine their police programs. Ithaca, New York, recently approved plans to replace the city’s current police department with a “department of public safety” that encompasses police officers and unarmed officials who will be tasked with responding to “certain non-violent” calls. Minneapolis has embarked on a similar project following a pledge by the majority of its city council to “dismantle” the police department and replace it with a new department with a broader skill set — an initiative voters are expected to weigh in on during November’s municipal elections.
Still other cities have begun to invest in a more expansive public health infrastructure. Eugene, Oregon’s Cahoots program — which sends mental health and medical professionals to certain emergency calls instead of police — drew intense interest in the months following Floyd’s death; now other localities, like Denver, have begun to pursue similar programming.
The federal government hopes to encourage other local governments to adopt this model as well: The American Rescue Plan contains a provision called the State Option to Provide Qualifying Community-based Mobile Crisis Intervention Services, essentially giving federal funding to assist local governments in creating mobile response units focused on providing emergency assistance to those experiencing mental and substance health crises.
Such major policy changes would not have happened if were not for Floyd’s death. They simply were not being discussed with the urgency they are now.
There are also ideas that go beyond these policies, including calls to abolish the police completely; supporters of that concept argue that policing is too corrupt to be reformed and that there is no place in modern society for armed security forces with little accountability. If there is not complete agreement on how far to go, it is clear that it is time to start moving, and the magnitude of Chauvin’s trial is indicative of that need.
The Chauvin trial is not the final battle in the fight against police violence
If Chauvin is found guilty, it will feel momentous, given how few misconduct cases even go to trial. It would seem as though there was a sudden shift in who the judicial system gives advantage to.
But as important as the Chauvin trial is, it must also be said that it is no synecdoche for police violence and misconduct. It is one case.
Should Chauvin be convicted, and there is no guarantee he will be, that won’t mean justice for all other families and communities that have lost loved ones to police violence, or who have seen someone dear to them lose time through improper imprisonment or assault. It will mean the government has closed a single case of misconduct, that what Chauvin did was wrong.
“What we cannot do is rest all of our hopes on the trial when, in essence, what we’re talking about is a system that makes this behavior permissible in the first place,” Hunter told me. “That system will remain intact after this trial is over, irrespective of what the outcome ultimately ends up being.”
That the trial is focused on a single act doesn’t mean that it can’t have a broader impact, though.
As Minister JaNaé Bates, communications director for advocacy groups ISAIAH and Faith in Minnesota, told me, “We’ve seen way too many police be able to kill Black people and not be held accountable. So this is a way for us to actually take some real bold steps for making sure this doesn’t happen again and again and again.”
Depending on the jury’s decision, there are likely to be very different initial responses. If Chauvin is convicted, many will celebrate, feeling — as George Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd recently said — that they are at last “able to breathe.” Should Chauvin be acquitted, there is likely to be an outpouring of anger and people taking to the streets.
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But the long-term response will be the same: a continued struggle to change policing and to dismantle the structural racism that has warped the institution. Only when that struggle succeeds will a truly just society exist — the type in which all feel equal.
The goal to protect 30 percent of the Earth is more arbitrary than you might think.
Right now, in the conservation movement, a lot of people are fixated on a single number: 30.
The US and more than 50 other countries have pledged to conserve 30 percent of their land and water by 2030 as a means to help thwart the biodiversity crisis.
Biodiversity tends to increase with the area of land or water conserved, yet just 16 percent of global land is in protected areas today (in the US, it’s closer to 12 percent), according to the World Database on Protected Areas. Intact ecosystems also play a major role in mitigating climate change.
As conservationists have recognized the importance of protecting rich ecosystems before they’re bulldozed, drained, deforested, or abandoned, “30 by 30” has become a rallying call for the movement’s most influential organizations, political leaders, and advocates.
“This effort goes to the heart of our mission to protect the wonder of our world,” Jill Tiefenthaler, CEO of the National Geographic Society, a group backing the target, said in a 2020 interview.
So, what makes 30 percent the magic number? Is it some kind of biological threshold, above which nature will flourish and we will avert total ecological collapse?
Not exactly.
As it turns out, “there’s no scientific basis for 30 percent,” Eric Dinerstein, the lead author of a widely referenced academic paper, “A Global Deal for Nature,” which calls for putting 30 percent of land in protected areas, told Vox. “It’s arbitrary.” (Disclosure: I briefly worked with Dinerstein several years ago when I was a research analyst at the World Resources Institute.)
Given the urgency of the situation, there’s an acute tension around how ambitious to be in conservation goal-setting. Often, targets laid out by scientists are at odds with what governments will find palatable. And for any goal to be successful, for that matter, many argue the world needs a new paradigm for conservation altogether — one that doesn’t exclude Indigenous people.
Why targets for protecting land and oceans are essential
As the human population has expanded, we’ve destroyed all kinds of habitats to construct housing, extract commodities like timber or gold, and grow food. That’s left us with rapidly shrinking patches of intact ecosystems that can — and do — support biodiversity, but with a fading effect.
To avert catastrophe, we’ll need to roll back that pattern and dedicate more land to support healthy, functioning ecosystems. And long ago, the conservation movement realized that to get there, countries would need to push each other to both make and keep commitments.
There are existing targets for the coverage of protected areas, set under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). CBD is an intergovernmental agreement, much like the Paris Agreement, but for biodiversity. In 2010, it set a number of conservation targets — including those that called for the protection of 17 percent of global land and 10 percent of oceans by 2020.
The reality, however, is that those smaller percentages simply aren’t enough, said Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, a group spearheading the global 30 by 30 push. (The group is funded by the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and works in partnership with the National Geographic Society.)
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30 by 30 is by no means the first effort to protect a large chunk of Earth for the sake of biodiversity. In his 2016 book Half-Earth, renowned ecologist Edward O. Wilson argued that “only by committing half of the planet’s surface to nature can we hope to save the immensity of life-forms that compose it.” (The concept of protecting 50 percent of the planet emerged decades earlier.)
But 30 by 30 is the first effort of its kind to gain such broad support.
While the target has been kicked around for years, it reached a milestone in January when a coalition of more than 50 countries led by Costa Rica, France, and the UK, called the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, announced a commitment to 30 by 30.
“We know there is no pathway to tackling climate change that does not involve a massive increase in our efforts to protect and restore nature,” said Zac Goldsmith, the UK’s minister for Pacific and the environment, when the commitment was announced.
The US is notably not part of that pact. But in his first full week in office, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping climate-related executive action that gave the Department of the Interior 90 days to come up with a plan to conserve 30 percent of American land and water. The department is set to deliver the report to the White House later this month.
“There is growing scientific consensus that we must conserve more land and water, with 30 percent representing the minimum that experts think must be conserved in order to avoid the worst impacts of nature loss to our economies and well-being,” Tyler Cherry, a spokesperson for the agency, told Vox. “President Biden has set an ambitious but achievable goal that will lift up a wide range of locally supported conservation and restoration actions, with the support of a broad range of stakeholders.”
So, 30 has no shortage of followers. Which brings us back to the debate over whether or not it’s the right number.
Why some conservationists think the 30 percent target should be higher
If this were the 1950s, 30 percent as a target would be fine, said Dinerstein, who’s now the director of the Biodiversity and Wildlife Solutions program at Resolve, a Washington, DC, nonprofit. Back then, there was more time to avert an extinction crisis, and there were plenty of intact ecosystems left outside of protected areas, he said.
Now, he says, “we don’t have that luxury.” What we really need, Dinerstein believes — echoing E.O. Wilson — is to protect half of the planet.
But 50 percent is a big number to stomach, especially when only 16 percent of land worldwide currently has that status (that number is much smaller for oceans). Instead, the authors of the “Global Deal for Nature” paper called for putting 30 percent in protected areas and another 20 in what they called “climate stabilization areas” — less strictly protected areas that would help draw down emissions.
“The inside story is that we thought that 50 percent by 2030 would just be unpalatable,” Dinerstein said of the target.
By contrast, 30 percent, and the catchy “30 by 30” phrase, could attract the backing of lawmakers, even if it’s not some kind of precise threshold. Indeed, such a universal threshold doesn’t exist.
“There’s no threshold where suddenly you’re going to get a magic response,” said Corey Bradshaw, a professor of ecology at Flinders University. “You’ve got to play the politics with respect to assigning particular values to targets or thresholds. At the end of the day, it has nothing to do with biology.”
O’Donnell, however, argues that a floor of 30 percent is justified by science. What the research seems to show is that 30 percent is not a hard threshold — no one number applies across all regions. But reaching it would, indeed, benefit biodiversity, given that less than half of that is protected today. Scientists tend to agree that anything much below 30 percent is not sufficient as well. (Bradshaw also points out that a focus on percent coverage alone obscures other important aspects of conservation planning, like connectivity among areas, which can have huge impacts.)
This debate is especially relevant now. The CBD’s 196 members are preparing to convene in October, at which point they’ll consider upping the target for protected areas to 30 percent. (Absent from that member list? You guessed it — the US.)
In a statement, Johan Hedlund, an information officer at CBD, told Vox that while the “location of protected areas and their effective and equitable management is more important than simple [percentage] of land or sea area,” the 30 percent target is in line with the convention’s vision for 2050. Yet, he added, the target is still under negotiation.
Indigenous activists are more concerned with avoiding “fortress conservation” than numbers
The simple catchphrase “30 by 30” belies the many challenges to establishing acres and acres of new protected areas (PAs).
For one, effective networks of PAs require careful planning. It’s important that they represent different ecosystems and provide pathways for animals to disperse, said Bradshaw. While the US protects 22 percent of its oceans, for example, most of the PAs are in one region — around Hawaii — leaving other important ecosystems at risk.
Protected areas are also not loved by all. In fact, many Indigenous communities initially opposed 30 by 30 because they worried it would put their land rights at risk, said Andy White, a coordinator at Rights and Resources Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for land rights.
“Fundamentally, the problem is not so much the number as it is the approach,” White said.
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The conservation movement has a long history of practicing “fortress conservation,” whereby sections of nature are blocked off at the expense of Indigenous people who use the land.
“Throughout conservation’s checkered history, we have seen exclusionary conservation as a gateway to human rights abuses and militarized forms of violence,” as José Francisco Cali Tzay, who is Maya Kaqchikel from Guatemala and the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, said last year.
Rights and Resources Initiative published a landmark study in 2020 showing that more than 1.6 billion Indigenous people, local communities, and Afro-descendants live in important areas for biodiversity conservation. Research has also shown that, in many cases, lands managed by Indigenous people hold as much biodiversity as protected areas.
“The right way to get to 30 percent is recognizing the rights of Indigenous people to their lands,” White said.
Considering Indigenous lands as part of global conservation efforts would easily breach the 30 percent target, White added. And the mainstream conservation movement appears ready to get behind this approach.
“We need more financial investments into securing land tenure rights,” O’Donnell said. “[Indigenous peoples’] rights and their approaches need to be at the forefront of 30 by 30.”
Why a reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of an ecological catastrophe is so badly needed.
You can probably guess the three global threats that topped a recent list from the World Economic Forum.
No. 1? Infectious disease. (Nothing like a pandemic to remind us of this.)
No. 2? Inaction on climate change.
No. 3? Weapons of mass destruction.
But No. 4? That one might surprise you: biodiversity loss. The forum’s survey found that the irreversible impacts of ecosystem collapse and species extinction pose a greater global risk in 2021 than the debt crisis.
A number of recent events have helped spark this awakening — from the breathtaking 3 billion animals, many of them rare, killed or displaced in the 2020 Australia wildfires to the possible emergence of the coronavirus from wildlife farms in China. There’s also been a wave of groundbreaking studies in the past year — on the rapid rate at which mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, and plants are disappearing; on the economics of biodiversity; on Indigenous communities’ forest management expertise; and the cost of invasive species — that have helped clarify this mounting ecological catastrophe underway and the necessary responses.
The stakes of addressing this crisis — from safeguarding against the next pandemic, to ensuring baseline ecosystem functioning to sustain life, to protecting the rights of Indigenous people and our food systems — could not be higher. And there are signs that stronger policies could be forthcoming: The Biden administration, in its first climate executive order, included a target of “30 by 30” with a goal of saving 30 percent of America’s land and oceans by 2030. In October, countries will come to the table at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to hopefully cement what could be the Paris Agreement of biodiversity.
All in all, it feels like the right moment to launch Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the global biodiversity crisis, led by senior science editor Eliza Barclay, editor Brian Anderson, and reporter Benji Jones. We’ll also feature freelance contributors from a diverse range of communities around the world.
Supported by the BAND Foundation, a private family foundation that makes grants primarily around nature conservation and epilepsy care, Down to Earth brings Vox’s signature explanatory journalism to a complex crisis that’s linked to — but too often overshadowed by — climate change. Our reporting will build on our award-winning 2019 supertrees project to uncover connections between the biodiversity crisis and other news of the moment with an emphasis on political and corporate accountability; solutions; the interconnections in the fragile web of life; and cascading impacts. There’ll even be optimism!
Why this is needed now
While there’s growing awareness of the catastrophic loss of species and the massive failure of countries to hit conservation targets, the general public still has a poor understanding of what the biodiversity crisis even is, let alone who’s driving it and what we stand to lose.
This crisis evokes paralysis. Aside from donating to conservation organizations (save the pandas!) or planting pollinators, many citizens and policymakers aren’t sure what, exactly, to do about it.
Down to Earth will zero in on the “now what?” to move the conversation forward, away from tired tropes of pristine wilderness to spotlight the effects of a crisis that might still feel invisible to many.
We’ll be looking at big questions, starting with the 30 by 30 target: How should the Biden administration — with Deb Haaland, the first Native American to lead the US Department of the Interior — advance both national and international biodiversity goals? What would it really take to hit targets to preserve a certain percentage of not only this country but the planet?
We’ll also step back and ask: How well do protected areas actually work? Has any country or region even totally nailed biodiversity policy, for that matter?
How do we sort through the conflict between building infrastructure — roads, bridges, and housing — with biodiversity protection? How do we conserve something when there’s no way to value it in the marketplace?
Which corporations are taking substantive and meaningful action to halt pollution and habitat and biodiversity loss?
What’s killing mussels? And, seriously, where the heck do eels mate?
You get the idea. Biodiversity isn’t just about species — it’s about abundance; healthy, functioning ecosystems; and cultural diversity too.
To get down to Earth, well, that’s down to us.