Email Address Lest we forget. The fear, the weeks of waiting, the vivid force of the eyewitness testimony; the replaying of grisly footage and then the shock of the conviction: the whole drama of the Derek Chauvin trial—its obscenity and thin catharsis—would not have taken place at all were it not for last year’s riots. Police trials are rare. So is national uprising: looting, acts of vandalism, and the nightly carnival of torched police cars are what vaulted George Floyd’s death from single cruelty to American crisis, as the fires of Minneapolis swept through every major city. It feels both near and far now.