Van Jones: If Chauvin Isn’t Convicted, ‘It Will Be Perceived as Open Season’ Telling Cops They ‘Can Literally Get Away With Murder in Broad Daylight’

Van Jones had an emotional reaction to the footage from the Derek Chauvin trial, telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo that seeing the video clip of Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck “frustrated, retriggered, retraumatized” him and “everybody I’m talking to,” because if Chauvin isn’t convicted, “it will be perceived as open season telling police officers from coast to coast you can literally get away with murder in broad daylight.”

Cuomo asked Jones what his reactions were to the first day of the trial, which included playing the horrific video at the center of the case.

“Everybody I’m talking to,” said Jones, was “frustrated, retriggered, retraumatized,” describing the video as showing “the complete contempt for life.”

The “entire young generation” of African-Americans and their allies, Jones continued, were watching the trial to see if America would listen. “The system is on trial here,” he said, and the “brutal” trial footage today “brought it all back home for tens of millions of people.”

Cuomo mentioned the defense strategy, to blame drugs for Floyd’s death, and asked Jones what he thought that would mean if they were successful in convincing at least one juror.

Jones said that would be “terrible,” said he was in law school when the Rodney King beating happened, and described his reaction:

“That was the first time we had seen a video taped beating that the whole world saw. Back then, video tapes, you barely saw a video camera off a movie set. Maybe at Thanksgiving dinner somebody would bring one out. To have a video taped beating where we could finally say this is what’s been happening in the community. When they came back with the initial verdict that it was okay for a police officer to do this, you lost a whole generation, including me. I went to the left side of Pluto after that. I was studying in law school and I said, ‘This is not liberty and justice for all.’ What is this? This is a different precipice we’re hanging over now because you now have an entire generation — and it’s not just African-Americans. It’s all of our allies.”

“This is the system on trial for a generation,” Jones concluded. “And, you know, listen, you can ask any of the people who have been marching out here in the middle of a pandemic…there will be half a billion people watching when the verdict comes out.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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