2020 Forced Americans to Confront the Reality of Racism. In 2021, Many Looked Away – By Janell Ross (TIME) / December 29, 2021
On Nov. 24, in the hour after Judge Timothy Walmsley read out the series of mostly guilty verdicts that could send three white men to prison for murdering Ahmaud Arbery, there was a lot happening around the Glynn County, Ga., courthouse where the trial had taken place. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that a quiet but essential moment went largely unnoticed.
When the courtroom doors opened and Arbery’s mother Wanda Cooper-Jones walked out, she crossed paths with Mona Hardin, mother of the late Ronald Greene. In 2020, Cooper-Jones was initially told that her son was killed during a burglary. In reality, he had been chased and shot dead in the street. The year before, Hardin was told her son died after what Lousianna State Troopers described as a high-speed chase by law enforcement and a crash. Later, video footage of the incident obtained by the Associated Press showed that while Greene had been involved in a chase, he was then stunned, beaten, dragged by ankle shackles and left moaning on the ground while officers wiped his blood from their bodies. Federal officials later found no damage to the vehicle or Greene’s body consistent with a crash. Some of the troopers involved have since died, been arrested or fired in connection with other matters; another, after a brief suspension, remains on the job. But Hardin is still awaiting news about whether the FBI and a U.S. attorney in Louisiana will take action in the case.
Outside that courtroom, without first speaking a word, the two women—one now in possession of some measure of justice, one in limbo—for several long seconds embraced.
CONTINUE > https://time.com/6128657/2021-american-racism/
