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Left Image: Laquan McDonald being shot in 2014. (Photo by Chicago Police Department via Getty Images) Right Image: Jason van Dyke 2015 mugshot. (Photo by Cook County State's Attorney's Office via Getty Images)
As Chicago awaited a decision in the murder trial of Jason Van Dyke's police officer for the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald last week, the city's school-kids were preparing for something they had never seen in their lives. Despite damning evidence against Van Dyke-most notably the notorious dash-cam video showing him unloading 16 shots into McDonald's, some after he was already crumpled on the ground-young Chicagoans had grown up in a town where killer cops just did not get Convicted. The last time it happened here was 1970.
But on Friday afternoon, a jury found guilty of second-degree murder and guilty on all counts of aggravated battery with a firearm-one for each shot he fired at the slain teen.
In the hours and days after, VICE spoke to the city of youth to reflect on the milestone. They painted a complex portrait of justice, hope and challenge. Some of the students seemed to have a lot of fun in their minds, having been seen in their memory, while they were young, in 2015. The intervening years, meanwhile, saw explosive growth in black and youth-focused organizing groups, and a landmark reparations agreement between the city and past victims of torture police (which included teaching the history of Chicago police outrages in public schools).
For some, the Van Dyke verdict was good, but not good enough-a second-degree murder conviction has a shorter sentence than the first-degree charge he faced, and Van Dyke was still acquitted on one count of official misconduct. For others, the extraordinary circumstances around the case seem like an impossibly high bar to reach in the future instance of police-involved murder.
And there will be more. As Damayanti Wallace, a 17-year-old senior high school, pointed out, even if there is no harm in verdicts against police [are still] dying. "
Looming over all of it, then, was the awareness that the criminal justice system remained on the same race as before. It was not gotten more humane-it just finally ensnared a local cop, too.
"There was so much anxiety in everyone's body," Wallace told me. At her West Side school, she said, students have been coming back: "600 students are trying to get the same Wifi, refreshing their feeds," she recalled the scene.
They said to themselves, Wallace said, that they would be able to say that Van Dyke would be found guilty. "But even after we say that and calmed down, it felt like time was moving so slow. But then it came. And, I kid you not-everyone just let out this huge sigh at once. "
Since almost all of Chicago Public Schools were still in session when the verdict came in early Friday afternoon, students described similar scenes: Clamoring around a phone to watch the live stream or the verdict was read, or surreptitiously sneaking glances at their phones or Twitter feeds while they and their peers pretended to pay attention in class.
"Relief" was the most consistent reaction among students, particularly the older ones with a more nuanced understanding of what was at stake. Some final cheers, but few cams close to describing a sense of outright joy-after all, many noted, the guilty verdict did not bring McDonald's back to life.
Sixteen-year-old Liza Booker is waiting at school where McDonalds was killed in the Archer Heights neighborhood. She felt relief, but only some.
"It gives me a little bit of hope," she told me.
Attention to McDonald's 2014 death did not ramp up until the following year; Van Dyke's official account was a neatly-presented instance of self-defense – McDonald's was carrying a knife-that ended in tragedy. In cops' telling, McDonald looked "deranged" and served as the aggressor, prompting Van Dyke to fire. But once more, the footage told a completely different story.
"[Van Dyke] shot him 16 times, "Booker said. "It could have been instinct-that's really presumptions-but it seems like black youth [are seen] as target practice. "
In just a six-year span, Chicago police shootings killed 92 people, according to a 2016 analysis by the Chicago Tribune. Black men and boys.
Maya Barber, 19, who graduated from the same high school as Wallace and is now in college, said the conviction was important for the expectation that the best victim of a family would be a cash payout. (Chicago awarded McDonald's family $ 5 million in a badful death settlement in 2015).
"A lot of these cases, people are paid off," Barber said. "That's not justice. That's settling. "
"[It was] the recognition that yes, this was murder, "she added. "I wish the minimum had been longer."
Wallace, Booker, and Barber had all been involved in recent years in different forms of local organizing that encompassed a range of issues such as LGBTQ rights, police accountability, climate change, and violence. In the McDonald's box, 2015's "Black Friday" is one of the most crowded thoroughfares.
"As youth activists, we're getting a lot of restorative training:" Learning about healing, "said Wallace. But when the dash-cam was first released, she noted, everyone's first reaction was, "Send him to jail! What's holding this up?"
"The vibe is different, now more kids understand restorative practices than we did four years ago," she continued. "And that's where the conflicting feelings are coming in now. If we do not, we'll be stuck with the same bad system. "
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