The Iowa legislature has unanimously passed a police reform bill — responding to the police misconduct the nation saw when a bystander in Minneapolis videotaped the death of George Floyd. It took less than two-and-a-half hours for the bill to be formally introduced and passed by the House and Senate. The bill wasn’t really debated. Instead, legislators rose to share their perspectives. Seventy-three-year-old Ruth Ann Gaines, a state representative from Des Moines, says the first time she really understood racism was as an eight-year-old, after she heard Emmett Till’s mother speak about her son’s lynching.

Dozens of Des Moines Black Lives Matter protesters who’d been in the capitol building all day were part of the moment, too. They sat or stood silently in the viewing galleries, many with a fist in the air, as lawmakers spoke, then cast their votes for the bill. The legislation forbids choke holds in nearly every situation and lets the state attorney general investigate deaths caused by police.