Last May, we changed our branding from its original salmon to black, to signify our solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Our small gesture was meant to visually protest the unnecessary deaths of people like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless other lives that were taken by typically white police that are shamefully incapable of viewing Black and BIPOC humans as equals. We vowed to keep our branding that way until there was justice for George Floyd's horrific killing by former Minnesota cop Derek Chauvin.
With this month's guilty verdict placed upon Chauvin, we're moving to our regularly scheduled salmon programming, but not without some bittersweet reservations for the future.
For one, there are still two months to go until Chauvin is sentenced June 25th. It's not clear yet how much time he will serve, though in our opinion, no finite amount of time is enough to redeem him for killing someone.
Secondly, one man's prison sentence does not the end of racism make. Chauvin's verdict might serve as an example to make police think twice before acting; however, there has since already been a few police killings of BIPOC people - children, at that.
It's our belief that the deep-rooted prejudices that police receive in training, and that are supported by systemic racism in popular culture, won't simply go away when one bad apple is sent to jail. The work is just starting now.
We all still have a lot of pain to unpack and a long road ahead.
