No charges have been brought against the three other cops involved in the killing -- Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Keung, who held Floyd down by the back and legs while Chauvin slowly killed him, and Tou Thao, who kept onlookers from interfering with the execution.
Moreover, the charging document released late Friday afternoon reads like a brief for Chauvin's defense, not his prosecution. It claims that Floyd's autopsy revealed "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation. Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions, including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease."
The document concludes that three factors contributed to Floyd's death: "The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death."
While President Trump has provided the most vitriolic rhetoric against those protesting police violence, denouncing them as thugs, the dirty work on the streets has been carried out at the orders for the most part of Democratic Party politicians like Governor Walz in Minnesota, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and countless other Democratic mayors and their hand-picked police chiefs.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a former leader of the Congressional Black Caucus and prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders, told a press conference Friday that residents of Minneapolis were understandably angry with the police but should not take this out on the National Guard. He said the troops came as helpers rather than occupiers, citing their efforts in the coronavirus crisis.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party as its presumptive presidential nominee, blamed the American people rather than the police for the murder of Floyd. "With our complacency, our silence, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence," he preached, invoking racism, "the original sin of this country," as the cause.
There is no doubt that racism was an important element in the murder of George Floyd. But racism is encouraged in a definite social context, of deepening social inequality under 21st century capitalism, where the ruling class makes every effort to divide and split the working class. More than 1,000 people are victims of police violence in America each year, and while a disproportionate number are black, the largest number are white. What nearly all have in common is that they come from the working class, most from its poorest layers.
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