In the wake of Tuesday’s guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial we may all feel the possibility of breathing. Yesterday’s verdict brought justice to George Floyd’s family. It was a great first step. What happened to George Floyd is too familiar to black men and women across the country. There are too many names to recall. 

Racism is a public health crisis and we cannot lose focus on the pervasive structural and systemic racism that continues to permeate the fiber of this country. Let us take this win and be inspired to push harder in our individual cities for fairness, justice and equality that Black Americans are so deserving of. It is time for us to BREATHE….

RACISM IS DEFINED BY THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION AS… 

“Racism is a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (which is what we call “race”), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.”

— APHA Past-President Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhD