Criminal courts are institutions of the oppressor, but they're also one
of the few institutions that directly record the thoughts and opinions
of working class and oppressed people, and create a permanent public
archive of their insight, empathy, courage and poetic imagination in
stressful sitautions. Obviously that's why court transcripts are always
of interest to social historians. The trial of Derek Chauvin is one of
the most politically important trials in US history, and I saw about an
hour of the testimony of Donald Williams this morning. It was incredibly
moving.
Williams is a professional fighter, a trained wrestler and mixed martial
artist. He testified because he saw George Floyd being choked by Derek
Chauvin. He recognised from his athletic training that the choking might
kill Floyd, so he called out to the cop to warn him--resulting in the
glare of absolute defiant fury that the Chauvin is recorded shooting
back at him in the most notorious photo of the killing.
Two particular passages of Williams' testimony were really heroic and
heart-rending in their kindness, passion and insight.
Williams witnessed the murder because of an odd chain of events. Earlier
in the day, he had been fishing with his "wrestling family" (he first
called them "wrestling friends" but then corrected himself to express
his closeness to them) and his son. They'd caught three bass on that
"beautiful day", boating on the lake. To kill the fish, Williams had
tied them in a plastic bag while driving home. But driving back, this
powerful professional fighter was upset by the death agonies of the fish
struggling in the bag. "I was going through some things watching these
fish die, watching them gasp for air, watching their eyes go back in
their head." Despite having worked as a butcher as a younger man, he
couldn't face the prospect of cleaning and gutting the fish himself.
Watching YouTube videos with his son to prepare for it was a bit too
much. So he parked his car to go for a walk, get some air, and maybe ask
a food worker at a local shop to prepare the fish for him. But before he
could walk into the shop, he heard a man--who he intimately now refers
to as "George", despite never having met or known him--crying out that
he wanted his mother, and that he couldn't breathe. Williams walked
towards the sound and saw the Black man on the ground with the cop's
knee on his throat. "When I first arrived on the scene, Mr. Floyd was
vocalising his sorriness, his pain, his distress he was going through.
The more the knee was on his neck, the more you seen Floyd fade away,
slowly fade away like a fish in a bag, you've seen his eyes slowly pale
out and slowly roll to the back of his eyes. This is what I've seen, and
what I've heard, and what it was."
Williams couldn't get to help Floyd because another cop, Thao, was
intimidating the crowd that had gathered on the curb, begging Chauvin to
release Floyd. When asked about Thao's role, Williams replied instantly
and with anger that has obviously simmered since Thao stopped him from
helping: "He was the dictator. He dictated what went on on the curb. He
controlled the people. He controlled me. He was the guy that let it go
on." More people gathered, including a woman paramedic who confirmed
Williams' fear that Floyd was dead or dying, and who also begged the
police to check Floyd's pulse. When the prosecutor asked Williams this
morning, "Do you remember Officer Thao saying anything during this time
period?", Williams laughed with contempt. "Yeah. He did what an American
does. He blamed it on drugs. He said, 'This is what drugs do to you'."
An extraordinary sharp and direct political insight. What could you say
that's better than that? The Minneapolis cops did what Americans do.
May be an image of 1 person and sitting
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