Thread by @polotek

There is a thing I've seen a lot today. It's a "concern" among conservatives and moderates that the Chauvin verdict is not a victory because it was "influenced" by public opinion. I want to talk about that for a second because it is worth addressing.

I want to start by saying that I understand where this comes from. If we're talking about the "spirit" of the court system. A judge and jury are supposed to try as much as possible to decide on cases without being influenced by other parties.

And whenever a crime and a trial get this much public attention, there's always an argument to be made that it's impossible for the outcome to be "unbiased". I agree with that in general. But I also think it's part of a wider narrative that has more nuance.

The reality is that it's impossible for people to make decisions without bias. We cannot escape our biases. And we are always conditioned with them. The hubris of the American legal system has always been pretending that what we're doing is controlling for bias.

What we're doing instead is controlling for *obvious and acute* biases introduced at the time of trial. We don't do anything to mitigate for the clear prejudices that people are always bringing with them into the justice system.

We know that judges are prejudiced. We can see it when we look at trends like sentencing. We know that prosecutors are biased. We can see it when we look at where they pursue charges and where they don't.

We know that jury selection is biased. We know that arrests are biased. We know all of these things. We can observe it directly. We can see it in studies. We can see it in data. None of this is a mystery. The fact is that America doesn't care about bias. It cares about control.

When people talk about trial verdicts being "influenced", what they mean is that the powers that be weren't able to control the narrative. The thing is that controlling the narrative is precisely what allows the powers that be to create a system that is systemically racist.

With no checks and balances on these outcomes, it's easy for the courts to let police walk free and continue to kill. We're all supposed to just trust that they're being objective and fair about things. When in reality there are so many different ways to *know* that's not true.

So all of the public attention around these trials is about creating accountability. It's about saying this justice system must prove that it is trustworthy by not delivering verdicts that we know contradict our very direct observation.

We don't always get the opportunity to observe directly. We've all had to subject ourselves to excruciating videos of people having their lives ended. Because that is the only way we the people get enough leverage to call bullshit on this system.

But we should never lose sight of the fact that this happens countless more times on a daily basis and we can't see it. Police kill thousands of people every year. We never hear their stories, there's no accountability, and those cops are still on the streets.

The problem is systemic. And one guilty verdict doesn't change that system in any real way. People in power are already doing victory laps because they want to use this as an excuse to keep doing nothing. We can't let that happen.

Instead, what we should take from this is a stronger conviction that it is possible to hold this system accountable. And we should recommit ourselves to making it painful *every single time* they murder us and then try to sweep it under the rug.

The goal of the movement is for us to make it socially, politically, and economically infeasible for this system to stay racist and corrupt. We have to keep pushing until the only way people get to keep their jobs is if they are committed to true justice.

It's a long, hard road. But that is the work. And it literally saves people's lives. There is reason to celebrate this victory today. But it should be seen as part of an ongoing movement that is not yet done. That's how I'm feeling today. I hope this helps you process as well.