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spiritualdirections · 4 years

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Mercy in a time of national anger

Last Sunday, the Church celebrated the feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit made the Apostle’s speech in their rough, Galilean accents, understandable to those from countries all over the region where Aramaic was not spoken. Ever since proud engineers tried to build the Tower of Babel, the languages of the Earth had been scrambled. The miracle of Pentecost is that through the Holy Spirit, the sin and punishment of Babel were set aside, and people began to understand each other. In fact, the Acts of the Apostles describes the early Church as having a miraculous level of unity, in which everyone lived in harmony, “with one heart and one mind (lit. “soul”).” This sort of unity is available to us, if through the Holy Spirit we set aside the sin that divides us.

But a few chapters later, that harmony gives way to jealousy and misunderstanding. The new Christian community in Jerusalem, which includes baptized converts from both Judaism and paganism, starts to divide among pagan-Jewish lines. At first, the problem is one of (alleged) discrimination—one group thought that they weren’t getting treated fairly. Later the divisions become theorized and theological—the Jewish converts wanted to impose Jewish customs and the Mosaic Law upon the non-Jewish converts. St. Paul spends much of his ministry fighting off this theological error. The Letter to the Romans explains his major arguments: Paganism is bad and you converts from paganism should rejoice at having been rescued from that. Judaism, on the other hand, includes God’s revealed truth. But the Jewish converts to Christianity shouldn’t boast about their superior heritage, since the Old Covenant was incomplete; all its religious truth didn’t actually rescue a single person from sin—for that we all need baptism into Jesus’ New Covenant. The pagan converts were apparently bragging that they’d now supplanted the Jews in God’s kingdom, and so St. Paul shut down that argument as well—we have nothing of our own to boast about, but only Jesus, and the fact that we get to suffer and participate in His Passion and sacrifice on the Cross.

Interpersonal animosity is a consequence of Original Sin. The original harmony of man and woman in the Garden of Eden, in which Adam rejoices that finally God has found him a suitable partner in Eve, gives way after the Fall to Adam blaming God for giving him “the woman”. Cain murders his brother Abel, his anger leaving him open to temptation by the devil. And so on, down to our day.

This week, we’ve been focused on how people of different races don’t love each other. Last fall, in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein revelations and the #MeToo movement, we focused on how men don’t treat women with respect. Before that, we were concerned about how we treated immigrants. And so on. It seems that we get outraged by whatever part of fallen humanity the media causes us to focus on right now, until the next news cycle refocuses us on the sin over there. We can always find genuine, real, interpersonal animosity if we look for it, since we can always find the fallenness of humanity if we look for it.

We can hate people who are different from us. And, as the story of Cain and Abel teaches us, we can hate people who are a lot like us. A few years ago, we were focused on how Irish Christians, racially indistinguishable from each other, were killing each other. We were shocked about how Rwandan Catholics, all of whom are black, conducted a genocide against each other in the 1990s. This Wednesday, we celebrated the feast of Charles Lwanga and the Ugandan martyrs, all members of the Gandan people, who were killed by their own king for refusing his homosexual advances. Husbands and wives, who profess their lifelong love on the day of their weddings, come to hate each other in the wake of the divorce. Mothers kill their own children by the millions through abortion, from some misguided sense of self-preservation (a species of self-love). We can grow to hate or mistrust anyone who isn’t us. That’s the lesson of original sin.

Charity, the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit, is the love that overcomes our anger at injustice and the sinful divisions that follow. Without charity, without grace, our concerns shrink: from a love of all mankind, to a love of our tribe (literal or metaphorical), to a love only of those like us, to a love of this family member but not that one, to a love of ourselves above all, even above Christ. Charity is the love that tears down the walls that divide us. Charity is the readiness to give our lives for those we love, in imitation of Christ’s sacrifice.

As the sad examples of Northern Ireland and Rwanda make clear, Catholics are not free of the temptation to selfishness and even to murder. The Church has had and will always have sinners within it. And yet, in the Creed we say, “we believe in one holy… Church.” This is a dogma. It doesn’t mean that the Church includes only those who are without sin, but rather that the Church is holy insofar as we allow the Holy Trinity to work within us. Through the Holy Spirit, we are baptized into Christ Jesus and his covenant with the Father. When we genuinely act and pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are holy. Charity is a participation in the interior life of the Trinity.

In my book Mercy, I talk about how a great part of the difference between Christian thinking and secular thinking about politics comes down to mercy, to how we respond to injustices. The mistake of what I call “justice-only politics” is to have well-developed ideas about how things ought to be (aka justice), but no concept of mercy, no real thought about what to do when circumstances and/or people get in the way of their idea of justice.

I think the national reaction to the killing of George Floyd reveals something like this. Some people think that the right thing to do is to enact reforms of the police; others think that the right thing to do is to kill the police and bomb the precinct. Some people think that nonviolent protests are an appropriate response; others think that injustice justifies robbing the local Target. Some people are satisfied when the bad cops are arrested, prosecuted, and convicted; others want to overthrow the government. Some are just so upset that they don’t know what to do. All agree that something deeply wrong happened to George Floyd, but our consensus stops there, at the level of justice.

Mercy is the virtue that comes into play when things go wrong. Once we decide that something is unjust, we still have to decide what is the right thing to do. Do we “cancel” the unjust persons, breaking solidarity with them and removing them from society? Do we send them to the guillotine? Or do we try to make things better? In an interesting Trinitarian statement, Jesus commands his disciples to “be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). So justice-only politics, or any politics without solidarity for the offender and the sinner, is not a Christian option.

Jesus also commands us to be meek and gentle, as he was, rather than angry. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on the Beatitudes, says that to be meek while at the same time not being a wimp (my paraphrase) is a gift of grace. For most people, to keep their anger at injustice under the control of their reason (so that it doesn’t grow to rage) is a virtue. But for the Christian, we have the grace and therefore the responsibility to go way beyond mere self-control. We are commanded to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, hunger and thirst for justice, and not to get angry enough even to call someone names—above all, to love everyone whom Jesus loves, for the reason that Jesus loves them. Jesus, when faced with the greatest injustice in the history of the universe, his own crucifixion, didn’t get angry; to the contrary, he was meek “as a lamb led to the slaughter.” He was strong—he was omnipotent—and could have resisted the injustice with power and caused his enemies to relent and submit. But he revealed to us that to be meek and loving in the face of great wrongs is to be divine.

Racism is a sin, and Jesus conquers sin. It’s a sad fact that most of our thinking about race takes place in a left-wing, Marxist, atheistic context, in which a desire for power and an awareness of otherness crowd out Christian reflections on meekness and solidarity. It didn’t used to be this way. The Civil Rights movement was once led by Christians, most notably the Protestant Pastor Martin Luther King. It appealed to the Gospel to unify people of all races. As in so much of our life, so to with regard to race, it’s a struggle to think in Christian terms. When people only talk about justice, it’s a struggle to cultivate mercy. It’s a struggle to forgive those who have trespassed against us, or people like us. It’s easy to forget what we said above, that mercy is commanded of us.

For this reason, I highly recommend that we Catholics foster a desire for mercy, pray for mercy, and perform works of mercy as much as we can. June is the month devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a symbol of his suffering for us out of his merciful love—the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart is Friday, June 19, a time when many people consecrate themselves to the Sacred Heart. Many people find that the Chaplet to Divine Mercy helps realign their hearts with Jesus’, so that they can regard people with his merciful eyes and love them with his merciful heart. Both devotions call attention to Jesus’ Passion, the steep price that he paid to conquer sin and division. We’ll find that we, too, have to pay a steep price to conquer the sin in our own hearts—that we cannot be casual or lazy about our own spiritual lives if we want to help the world to be better.

There are no spiritual shortcuts. To conquer racism requires a conversion to holiness, and a willingness to spread grace and charity to hardened hearts. Only through baptism into Christ’s Ascension can any fallen human being participate in the inner charity of the Trinity. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to transform our lives.

#racism #sexism #hatred #anger #Mercy what every catholic should know #charity #trinity #pentecost #holy trinity #homily

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dailydj · 4 years

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A Wild Storm of Hatred

Tornadoes, like snow days and convenient street parking, are a bit of a foreign concept to us who live in Los Angeles. Sure, you might see a movie star at a cafe, or a blazing inferno thirty feet away while you drive down the freeway, but the thing closest to what we might call a “storm” is a sprinkling of rain that forces us to turn our windshield wipers to the fastest setting.

Storms were just another one of those things that I might see on the news, happening in other places, feeling concerned about for the sake of others, but otherwise not really being my problem. And that’s analogous to my experience with police brutality and racially rooted violence in America.

Not that racism is in any way invisible in this city. If I walk in any single direction from my apartment, I’ll pass through several adjacent neighborhoods of wildly fluctuating socioeconomic status, and I’d have to be blind to miss the correlation between race and chain-link fences, boarded up homes, or expressions of safety and contentment on people’s faces. The tangible effects of systemic racism are written plainly on any map of my city, in the ink of poverty, gentrification, and unjust zoning policies. But, these are just light rains compared to what’s going on in other cities.

I’m talking about murder, of course. Power being abused in service of fear, rooted in a belief that we just can’t seem to shake as a nation, that somehow the status of being human has been distributed based on skin color. This is the storm.

Psalm 55. For the choir director: A psalm of David, to be accompanied by stringed instruments.

I’ll be honest; reading through the book of Psalms is super, super boring. They’re nothing like the exciting stories of war and royal drama or mystical symbolic creation myths that precede it. But every once in a while, a psalm creates an image in my mind so vivid and impactful that I have to write about it.

1 Listen to my prayer, O God. Do not ignore my cry for help! 2 Please listen and answer me, for I am overwhelmed by my troubles. 3 My enemies shout at me, making loud and wicked threats. They bring trouble on me and angrily hunt me down.

This week, I was so stressed, and I wasn’t really sure why. My daily quarantine routine of waking up, eating breakfast, watching Community on Netflix and playing games on Steam, then going to sleep, hadn’t changed. But I had read an article online about a CNN reporter who had gotten arrested at a protest in Minneapolis, just for being a bystander while black. The live television feed from the camera, lying on the ground, while the police led the reporter and his crew away, left a chilling impression. Something in the wall between my relative safety and the rest of the world started to crack, as wind and rain beat against it from the other side.

4 My heart pounds in my chest. The terror of death assaults me. 5 Fear and trembling overwhelm me, and I can’t stop shaking. 6 Oh, that I had wings like a dove; then I would fly away and rest!

What would I do if I was there? What if I was that Asian cop, standing by while his fellow officer choked the life out of another man? What if history had played out just a little differently, or I was born just a few decades earlier in this country, when my people and I were regularly subjected to violence from powerful groups fueled by racism?

I don’t know. I would be so afraid. I don’t know if I would stay and fight for justice, or if

7 I would fly far away to the quiet of the wilderness. (Interlude) 8 How quickly I would escape— far from this wild storm of hatred.

Sometimes, I just feel so angry. I feel like the evil of racism is just too great for any of us to do anything about it, and I feel powerless and weak and prone to despair. Why doesn’t God just

9 Confuse them, Lord, and frustrate their plans, for I see violence and conflict in the city. 10 Its walls are patrolled day and night against invaders, but the real danger is wickedness within the city.

The virus is attacking us from outside, corruption and division are tearing us apart from within, and sometimes it feels like

11 Everything is falling apart; threats and cheating are rampant in the streets.

12 It is not an enemy who taunts me— I could bear that.

No, how much better it would be if all the racists wore white hoods and name tags that clearly stated their philosophical position of which kinds of people deserve to live or die.

It is not my foes who so arrogantly insult me— I could have hidden from them.

I might be able to stand my ground and fight, then, if I knew with such certainty that I was on the right side, that I was fighting for the side of good with all the good people and no one I loved would be caught up in the cross-fire, but

13 Instead, it is you—my equal, my companion and close friend. 14 What good fellowship we once enjoyed as we walked together to the house of God.

Everywhere on social media, they’re saying that if you side against the protesters, that if you tell them not to protest in the way they’re protesting, you’re just silencing their voices in the same way that cop silenced George Floyd’s. How do I respond, then, to the people that I know are good people who hate violence and want peace but maybe, just maybe, wouldn’t be so quick to advocate for peace if it was a white person killed, instead lauding the sacrifices necessary in war when fighting against a great evil? And what do I do when I find some of that in myself, too?

15 Let death stalk my enemies; let the grave swallow them alive, for evil makes its home within them.

16 But I will call on God, and the Lord will rescue me. 17 Morning, noon, and night I cry out in my distress, and the Lord hears my voice. 18 He ransoms me and keeps me safe from the battle waged against me, though many still oppose me. 19 God, who has ruled forever, will hear me and humble them. (Interlude) For my enemies refuse to change their ways; they do not fear God.

20 As for my companion, he betrayed his friends; he broke his promises. 21 His words are as smooth as butter, but in his heart is war. His words are as soothing as lotion, but underneath are daggers!

22 Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about what justice is and what it means. Sometimes, it seems so clear-cut. Be kind to homeless people, take care of those who have been treated unjustly, work to fix the systems that are broken. Other times, there are more questions. Will violence ultimately set back our fight for justice, or is it necessary to respond proportionately to injustice? Do we hold strictly to nonviolent moral ideals, or does tragedy inevitably beget tragedy?

But beneath all the questions, I think it’s much simpler. I’m afraid, when the National Guard shows up right outside my apartment building, and it slowly dawns on me just how powerful the enemy is that we’re fighting against. How can we possibly win a fight against a racist president who commands the world’s most powerful military, against a whole country of white people who’ve internalized their own superiority, whether conscious or not, against my own people who’ve been co-opted to believe they’ve won a spot among the conquerors? How can we win against an enemy that confuses truth by spreading propaganda, weaponizing Scripture, all while crooning a siren song of personal safety, complacency, and comfort? Every argument and counter-argument, every opinion and piece of information and angle to consider it from, I need to sort through to separate truth from lies, all while knowing that there are people dying because evil is winning, and I could be next.

23 But you, O God, will send the wicked down to the pit of destruction. Murderers and liars will die young, but I am trusting you to save me.

#intp #christianity #justice for floyd

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betweenthelines · 4 years

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Cake Edition: Episode 2 - Break Me

I struggle to fully trust God. Because if God told me that He needed to break me, I would have a bunch of questions for Him. When will my breaking happen? How are You going to do it? How painful is it going to be? Am I going to be in a complete mess? What about afterwards?

I struggle to fully trust God and let Him do His thing. My biggest fear was to have a broken heart. So why in the world should I pray for God to break me? But all of these things show that I am privileged.

Before we dive into the word of God, let’s bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Dear heavenly loving Father, I thank you for this opportunity. The world is broken all around us. Teach us to to break with those who are breaking and may we connect and learn to stand with each other. This I pray, in the precious name of Jesus, amen.

There was this Man named Jesus. He came from Heaven and was born into this world to break. Because of His love for people, He wanted to break. And as His ministry was coming to a close, He invited His disciples to share in His last meal.

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.’”

These are the words that came from a Man whose name is Jesus. In the entire Bible, He was the only One I could think of who literally wanted to be broken. Now, don’t get me wrong, other people definitely experienced breaking. You have Paul on his journey to Damascus who was broken from his pride, Moses, killing an Egyptian, Jonah in the belly of the whale, Naomi turning bitter, David sleeping with Batsheba and murdering Uriah, Peter denying Christ three times, and the list goes on and on.

But in their experiences, they never asked God: BREAK ME! They never looked up to heaven and prayed for hardships and trials in order to be closer to Him. Never. Their struggles came upon them unexpectedly. In fact, 2 Samuel 11:2 describes the start of David’s breaking by using the words “then it happened” “by chance” “out of the blue” “it just so happened.”

Church, there are people in the world who do not have the privilege to ask to be broken. They do not ask to be broken, but their narratives have been intertwined with brokenness the day they were born. Perhaps this is the story of your neighbour, the people south of the border, or even yourself.

When I was given the topic of “Break Me” I went to my room, knelt down on my soft carpeted floor, and prayed, “Lord, break me to be more like You.” Many of you may say that this is a bold and dangerous prayer. But I want to argue that this is not only a bold and dangerous prayer, but a prayer of PRIVILEGE from the PRIVILEGED. Because as I knelt down, I realized that: I have the liberty and time to pray.

Others don’t have this religious freedom. Others are busy marching on the streets. Others are consumed by protecting their city. Others are grieving from injustice. Others don’t have a voice or don’t have the opportunities to be heard. My brothers look at the colour of their skin and are told by their parents that the world will tell you that you are not enough, but as your mother/father, I will be the first voice to audibly and intentionally say that you are beautiful! You are made in the image of God. Do not let the voices of the world make you believe otherwise. Some don’t even have that. And then they step out into a world, where there is police brutality, where the justice system works against them, where their cries are swept under the rug, where their bleeding wounds are ignored by, dare I say, the church.

Brothers and sisters, it is a privileged prayer to ask God: Lord, break me.

As Jesus broke the bread, which represented how His body would be broken, He blessed it. And as he poured out the wine, which represented how His blood would be spilled, He gave thanks. Jesus KNEW that it was a privilege to be broken for others.

In John 10 starting at verse 11, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. I lay down My life for the sheep. For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.” A commandment of selfless and sacrificial love.

Jesus voluntarily gave His life for us. He, who formed the universe, who holds the world in the palm of His hands, whom the stars and sun obey, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords.

He who was “so exalted, to whom every knee shall bow, He whom the angels of glory count it honour to serve, bowed down to wash the feet of those who called Him Lord. Washed the feet of His betrayer.”

He broke bread. Poured wine. His body was torn and His blood spilled. He whose “strength sets fast the mountains” He who owns and made the sea, was moved by love when He saw us breaking and said, “Father, Break Me!” JESUS CHOSE TO BREAK WITH AND FOR US. And how is it that we have the audacity to to proclaim His name upon our lips and choose to not break with others.

The Bible says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8)! Greater love has no one than this than to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). God’s love for us was so deep that Jesus decided to innocently die on the cross. And as His body was breaking, His heart was being torn apart.

As He hung on the cross, He thought of you. He thought of the pain that you would experience and He felt it on the cross. He felt the burdens of Martin Luther King Jr. Felt the dirty stares given to Rosa Park. The harsh words spoken to Ben Carson. Christ struggled to breath as He saw Geroge Floyd’s neck being pinned to the ground. He saw the tears of George Floyd’s mother as He looked into his own mother’s weeping eyes.

He saw the policemen fearing for their lives. He saw Derek Chauvin being cancelled from society. He saw Pastor Dave dealing with heart issues, Pastor Anderline filled with unspoken requests. He saw the elders trying to cope with the pandemic, He saw Church in the Valley’s… valley moments and He cried out: Lord, forgive the world! For they don’t know what they’re doing. But in this moment, even though they are doing all in their power to break Me, I still choose to break for them. Then He cried out: It is Finished. And He hung His head and died.

Hebrews 4:15 tells us that Jesus is “not a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but [He] has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet without sin.” As Christ broke on the cross, He came to fully understand the pain and struggles humanity has faced, is facing and will face. He tells us that “in this world, you will have tribulation. But take heart, for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Christ tells His disciples in John 10 that “12 He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep.” Then Jesus says, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”

After His resurrection, in John 21, He calls one of His closest disciples. He calls Peter to Him. And as I picture Jesus and Peter walking along the shore of the beach, I can see Jesus turning to Peter, the one who had promised that he would never deny his Lord. The one who had vowed to go with Jesus until prison and death. The one who failed to keep his word, who was so deceived by his own heart, but was known so well by his Lord.

I can see Jesus turning to this Peter and asking him, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love you.’ He said to him, ‘Feed My lambs.’ ‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?’ ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Tend My sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?’ Peter was grieved because He asked him a third time and he said, ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’”

Peter was broken. And the way Jesus restored him was to call him to be a shepherd. Peter knew full well what a shepherd and a hired person looked like. He knew the vast difference. He remembered the lessons Jesus had taught him. That hired people, fake shepherds, don’t care for the sheep. They flee when they see the flock being attacked.

But a shepherd protects the flock. A shepherd carries the sheep when it has been wounded. A shepherd hears the cries of the lambs. A shepherd walks with his flock. A shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A loving shepherd takes the opportunity, the privilege to break for others.

Peter had witnessed the love and restoring grace of Jesus. He had witnessed that Jesus was the TRUE GOOD SHEPHERD. Jesus broke Himself for Peter and now Peter was given the PRIVILEGE AND HONOUR to do the same. Jesus tells Peter, “I tell you the truth, when you were young, you were able to do as you liked; you dressed yourself and went wherever you wanted to go. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will dress you and take you where you don’t want to go.’ Jesus said this to let him know by what kind of death he would glorify God. Then Jesus told him, ‘Follow me.’”

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Many of us have made Jesus our Lord. We know the sacrifice He gave for us. We acknowledge that He loves us. We have witnessed how He has mended our broken hearts time and time again. And now, we are faced with an opportunity, a privilege.

Just as Jesus called Peter to be a shepherd, Jesus is calling you. We may have denied Him time and time again, but are we willing to now follow Him?

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There is a broken world. There are sheep in God’s flock that have not been brought to Him yet. Are we willing to walk with them? Are we willing to hear their cries? Are we willing to carry them on our shoulders? Are we willing to show the greatest form of love by being willing to lay down our lives for our friends? Or have we grown content in our fake Christianity and settled to become hired hands over God’s flock?

Let this humble and selfless mind which was in Christ, be also in us today. May the love of Jesus be the only thing that moves us to feed, tend and care for His sheep.

If it is your prayer to be like Jesus and to accept His call of privilege to break for others, I invite you to please stand. You’re probably going to look crazy in your home, maybe you were lying down, but if this is your desire, to be like Christ and break for others, arise with me as we pray.

Dear heavenly loving Father, all of us have exerpeicned pain and many of us are experiencing brokenness right now. I know for a fact that you have called our church, Church in the Valley, that sees people in their valleys to meet them where they’re at as well. Give us the strength and boldness and love to break for others. This I pray, in the precious name of Jesus, amen.

#cake edition #break me #sermon #sermonette #prayer #bible #faith

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oldguardaudio · 3 years

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Kangaroo Court Derek Chauvin - George Floyd CASE

Kangaroo Court Confirmed: Prosecutor in George Floyd Case Makes Stunning Admission

Christine Favocci June 28, 2021, at 4:36pm

Derek Chauvin’s murder conviction was a pivotal event in American history — not as the moment of racial reckoning the professional race-baiters have sold it as, but rather as the day the Sixth Amendment died.

The white former Minneapolis police officer was convicted of three counts of murder and will spend more than two decades behind bars after George Floyd, a black suspect, died while in his custody in May 2020.

Instead of the usual case of an impartial jury finding him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (much more on that in a bit), it now appears there was a concerted effort to scapegoat and sacrifice Chauvin to appease the violent mobs who burned cities for months.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

According to Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota and lead prosecutor in the case, Chauvin would not be in jail but for “ordinary people who courageously bore witness to Floyd’s death and the pressure from a community that demanded accountability and action,” he said in an Op-Ed for The Washington Post.

“For generations, America has been stuck in a cycle of inaction when it comes to addressing decades of mistrust between communities of color and law enforcement,” Ellison began.

“To honor the legacy of George Floyd, we must act now to break the cycle.”

Though Chauvin’s trial didn’t include any official accusations of racism against the ex-cop, Ellison subtly tied his conviction to larger tensions that exist between minority communities and law enforcement (Chauvin was somehow such an unabashed white supremacist that he married an Asian immigrant).

Ellison lamented how the prosecution of cops is scarce, pointing out that “Chauvin is one of the few police officers ever convicted of murder for a death on the job,” he wrote.

“Chauvin’s 22½-year sentence, announced Friday, is one of the longest any police officer in the United States has received in modern times for the death of a civilian,” Ellison gloated.

The attorney general further recommended “vigorous, visible and swift prosecutions” for officers who harm civilians with excessive use of force but ratcheted up that reasonable proposition into a call for activism.

“They should not be afraid to use all the tools the law puts at their disposal,” Ellison advised other prosecutors. “The visibility of prosecutions, to restore and build credibility with the public, is as important as the vigor employed.”

However, it was his conclusion that proved the outsized influence Black Lives Matter riots and activism had on the outcome of the case.

“My office could not have led the prosecution of Chauvin without the help of ordinary people who courageously bore witness to Floyd’s death, and the pressure from a community that demanded accountability and action,” Ellison said.

Report: Here's More Evidence Chauvin Juror Lied During Jury Selection

It was a sentiment shared by veteran instigator the Rev. Al Sharpton who similarly credited groups like BLM for Chauvin’s conviction and harsh sentence.

“Justice would have been the maximum. We got more than we thought, only because we have been disappointed so many times before,” Sharpton said Friday following the sentencing.

He asserted Chauvin’s 22.5-year sentence is “longer than we’ve ever gotten, but shorter than what we should have gotten in the past” for police involved in other such incidents.

“Let us remember: A man lost his life. This is not a prayer of celebration; it’s a prayer to thank God for giving the strength to this family and those activists that stayed in the streets to make sure this court had to do what was right,” he said in an apparent nod to the rioters who burned down several major cities in Floyd’s name.

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Ben Crump, the Floyd family’s attorney, also credited the uprisings for the severe sentence. “You all raised your voices and because you raised your voices, that is why we got the guilty conviction and that is why we got the longest sentence in the state of Minnesota history,” he said.

But more than Ellison’s words or Sharpton’s rallying cry or Crump’s gratitude, the actual circumstances of the trial reveal the greatest miscarriage of justice when it comes to the influence the racial activists had on Chauvin’s fate.

When footage of Chauvin with his knee across Floyd’s neck first went viral on social media, it sparked a months-long outbreak of protests and riots across the country largely fueled by the unfounded narrative that the incident was a racially motivated killing.

By the time Chauvin and the other officers involved would stand trial, Minneapolis had become ground-zero for those protests — but a judge denied a change of venue anyway.

This meant the jurors were plucked from a city still suffering from the aftermath of those protests tied directly to the man whose fate they would decide.

It was clear those selected were painfully aware of the grave consequences that would await the city all over again if Chauvin was set free as an implicit threat.

But then there was also California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters who urged protestors at another anti-police rally in Minnesota to “get more confrontational” if they didn’t get their way just ahead of the Chauvin trial verdict — and jurors had not been sequestered at the time she said it.

Worst yet was juror Brandon Mitchell who it was later learned had attended BLM protests and on more than one occasion wore a shirt that specifically referenced the Floyd case with graphics that read “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks/BLM.”

Chauvin was no choir boy, but he still deserved a fair trial that the Sixth Amendment specifically guarantees to all who are accused under the law.

Instead, what he got was an activist media exploiting racial tensions and a violent mob to influence prosecutors and jurors to send the man to jail.

Never mind that it could have been the number of drugs in Floyd’s system or resulting excited delirium that caused his death — only Chauvin’s conviction would appease the mob.

Many on the left cheer the verdict and the decades-long sentence as a victory for their movement, but it’s more likely this was a loss for the right to a fair trial.

Today it’s Derek Chauvin rotting in jail after facing such odds, a prospect many don’t find so bad considering he appeared to be callous and cold while a man died on the street — but who will it be next time?

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