Watching footage of unjust police killings is enraging and traumatizing. It’s also enraging that Americans paid so little attention to such killings before ubiquitous video forced them to confront the issue. No wonder some feel that achieving meaningful reform through the civic process is impossible (a feeling that is understandably heightened in communities where long voting lines, felony disenfranchisement laws, or gerrymandering make democratic organizing more difficult).
But Obama is right, and that feeling of impossibility, however understandable, is demonstrably incorrect. Just look at the mountain of evidence that change through the civic process is not only possible, but a recurring reality, and that it began long before Floyd’s death.
