These last few days have laid bare that we are a nation furious at injustice. Every person of conscience can understand the rawness of the trauma people of color experience in this country, from the daily indignities to the extreme violence, like the horrific killing of George Floyd.
Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.
The act of protesting should never overshadow the reason we protest. It should not drive people away from the just cause that protest is meant to advance.
I know that there are people all across this country who are suffering tonight. Suffering the loss of a loved one in intolerable circumstances, like the Floyd family, or to the virus that is still gripping our nation. Suffering economic hardships, whether due to COVID-19 or entrenched inequalities in our system. And I know that a grief that dark and deep may at times feel too heavy to bear.
I know.
And I also know that the only way to bear it is to turn all that anguish to purpose. So tonight, I ask all of America to join me — not in denying our pain or covering it over — but using it to compel our nation across this turbulent threshold into the next phase of progress, inclusion and opportunity for our great democracy.
We are a nation in pain, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us. We are a nation exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us.
As President, I will help lead this conversation — and more importantly, I will listen. I will keep the commitment I made to George’s brother, Philonise, that George will not just be a hashtag. We must and will get to a place where everyone, regardless of race, believes that “to protect and serve” means to protect and serve them. Only by standing together will we rise stronger than before. More equal, more just, more hopeful — and that much closer to our more perfect union.
Please stay safe. Please take care of each other.
This statement is harder on those protesting than on the police.
The police state has to be dismantled. A “conversation” isn’t going to do it. This is basically “thoughts and prayers” bs.
You really do refuse to give Biden the time of day, don’t you?:( I thought it reminded me of RFK’s statement in Indianapolis the night MLK was killed.
I invite you listen and watch that speech. RFK most certainly did NOT call for a “conversation” about racism and racial violence — he went MUCH further than that.
This is not a time be criticizing anybody for not giving Joe Biden — or any other member of the privileged white establishment — “the time of day”.
This is a time for DEMANDING that our out-of-control police violence against blacks END. Now. This is a time for demanding criminal investigations and prosecutions for every person — whether or not in a uniform — who kills another in unprovoked and disproportionate violence.
This is a time for DEMANDING that the exploding assault on journalists and the First Amendment STOP.
There were widely published reports of US troops shooting at journalists trying to cover the 2003 Iraq invasions. Those reports were ignored just like all the other American war crimes were ignored — ignored by DEMOCRATS.
This is time for DEMOCRATS to demand that government authorities obey the rule of law and the Constitution.
Biden talked about grief, empathy, and feeling people’s pain, which is what I recall being the theme of the RFK speech.
RFK said, more than fifty years ago (3:47- 5:29):
Here’s the conclusion of Mr. Biden’s message:
RFK makes no mention of “conversation” and does not promise to “listen” (which is so often a nice way of promising to do nothing at all). RFK does not attempt to tell his audience to make up with the police that are murdering them. He tells nobody to “stand together”.
Mr. Biden instead lectures the tens of millions of suffering people about the limits of their protest — a proscription that results in fenced-in “free speech zones” such as at the 2004 Democratic convention here in Boston.
Perhaps to you these two messages are similar. To me they are not.
Note to editors — the new comment editor is mangling various format operators. The blockquote element in the above started as a single multi-paragraph quote. The new comment editor insists on multiplying each quoted paragraph into its own blockquote element, and my attempts to use the “source” button to correct it were ignored. Similarly, links do not appear properly unless I submit the comment and then edit/save it. The new comment editor cannot handle quoted tags (it applies them instead of showing the quoted tag). Perhaps a config setting of some sort?
You are looking way too hard for the negative in Biden’s comments. For me to condemn them I would have to find something affirmatively bad, not just not quite the way I would have put it. We already have a President who sows division as a matter of habit so I’m more than fine with one who tries to listen and bring people together. Find me Biden’s statement where he praises the police assaults and we’ll talk.
@Christopher:
I am responding to your comparison of RFK’s famous MLK speech and Mr. Biden’s message as quoted in the thread-starter.
It appears to me that you are hearing what you want to hear in Mr. Biden’s message. I didn’t allege that Mr. Biden praised police assaults. Instead:
Police shot and killed protesters in Louisville, KY last night. It appears to me that you are in denial of just how serious this situation is — right now.
My prediction is that if Mr. Biden continues THIS approach, he will see his support among black voters evaporate.
When I see police shooting and arresting journalists, I expect my nominee to loudly and clearly condemn those abuses. We are long past the time for “conversation”.
It is time for ACTION against this out-of-control police state.
I guess we’re back to personality differences. I’m generally not one to loudly demand anything – it’s just not in my nature. All I know is I only got halfway through Fred’s diary quoting Biden’s statement without seeing the comments or other prompting and I instantly thought of RFK in Indianapolis. In fact, before I got to a couple of obvious current event references I thought maybe Fred WAS quoting RFK in Indianapolis, that’s how similar they sounded.
@Personality differences:
In Pittsburgh in the 1972 presidential campaign, Spiro Agnew was making a campaign appearance in a downtown Pittsburgh hotel. I was part of a reasonably large and peaceful protest (several thousand — not as big as the famous gatherings in DC, but larger than was common in Pittsburgh).
We were marching in circles around the hotel, carrying signs and shouting slogans. There was no violence and no threat of violence.
The Pittsburgh police showed up in full riot-gear regalia with dogs. There may have been National Guard members with them (I never did know). They surrounded the protest from the outside, and there were enough of them that they were able to form a continuous shoulder-to-shoulder cordon.
A signal was given, and the police closed the circle on the crowd, wielding clubs wildly and running the dogs towards the demonstrators. There was no warning and nowhere to go. The police were clearly looking to bust heads.
Within seconds, the sidewalk was filled with hurt and bleeding demonstrators. Young and old men, women, and children screamed in agony while bleeding from crushed ears and jaws and from dog bites. The smaller group I was in managed to break through the cordon and run for our lives.
Within minutes, what had been a peaceful protest turned into mobs of angry young people turning over cars — especially police cars — and torching them, breaking store and car windows, and causing as much mayhem as possible.
The news reports of that event described the rioting, the overturning of cars, the breaking of store windows. There were videos of burning police cars.
There was no mention of the clearly-intentional decision to run the police dogs into the crowd and turn the demonstration into a riot.
Police brutality is personal for me. That protest happened nearly fifty years ago and is still brightly etched in my memory.
At that time, we called police “pigs” because so many of them were just that. I was there, I ran for my life.
Perhaps I hear these protesters with different ears than you.
To be clear there is no excuse for the police behavior you describe, though the retaliation I don’t think was appropriate either. I’m not at all blaming you for going and protesting, but will just point out that I’m not likely to have been there in the first place.
I think I spoke too soon.
Joe Biden has said more today on this issue.
He said that we should be “teaching a cop, when there is an unarmed person, coming at them with a knife or something, to shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart, is a very different thing.”
He’s gotta go.
On issue after issue and in times of crisis, Joe Biden is showing that he simply is not the man for the moment.
It’s not too late.
He is the one person standing in the way of a second term of the most despicable human being ever to be President, one who has deliberately fanned the flames.
@He is the one person …:
And THAT demonstrates the pervasive systemic racism that divides this nation.
I’m not sure I understand your point. You are the one that has been pointing out that Biden was the choice of African-American participants in this year’s primary.
@Biden was the choice of African-Americans …:
Yes indeed he is. That’s my point.
So it appears that the only choice left to stop Donald Trump is a man who is so clueless that he has to be corrected at literally every turn.
If systemic racism did not exist, then the candidate split among black voters would be about the same as the candidate split among white voters, at least for white candidates.
The fact that ONE candidate is the overwhelming choice of black voters says that black voters believe that just one candidate represents them. That is itself evidence of pervasive systemic racism.
I assume you mean just one of the presumptive nominees? Otherwise, why wouldn’t say, Cory Booker be seen as a voice for African Americans?
@Why not Cory Booker?:
I thought I was clear, but let me try again.
I don’t mean just one of the presumptive nominees, I mean just one candidate — period.
When one candidate is the overwhelming choice of a specific demographic group — and not the rest of the population — then I think it is valuable to ask why.
Black Democrats overwhelmingly chose Joe Biden. Mr. Biden was the last choice of the rest of the Democratic electorate (although with some strength among baby boomers). That extreme disparity suggests to me that there is a very strong racial aspect to Mr. Biden’s support. That racial aspect is what I’m talking about.
Joe Biden is among the weakest of all the candidates. He is notoriously gaffe-prone and as the middle of the Democratic electorate moves left he becomes increasingly the candidate of the Democratic right.
So black Democrats see something in Joe Biden that non-black Democrats either don’t see or even oppose. The obvious answer is Joe Biden’s professed support for black Americans.
If black Americans saw that support for black Americans from other candidates — or if they thought those other candidates could win — they would support those other candidates. In the absence of any racial component, candidates would divide black Democrats about the same as non-black Democrats.
I see only one reasonable explanation for the pronounced racial component of Mr. Biden’s support — systemic racism is pervasive in America. Black voters overwhelming support Mr. Biden because they believe he is the only viable candidate who represents them. Non-black voters reject Mr. Biden for the same reason.
I suppose we can discuss whether or not that perception of black Democrats is correct. I suggest that the events of the last week compelling argue that it is — and the situation is getting worse rather than better.
Black voters either did not like Cory Booker or did not believe he was viable. I suspect the latter, but I’m not sure it matters.
He’s supposed to be a leader in this moment and this statement was garbage. We can’t be grading people on a curve for President.
On Saturday, May 30, 2020, police in New York City DROVE THEIR VEHICLE INTO A CROWD. This video shows attempted murder. James Alex Fields Jr. was correctly convicted of first-degree murder for committing precisely the same act in Charlottesville in 2017.
It’s LONG past time for “conversations” — it’s time for aggressive prosecutions and convictions. It is shameful that Bill de Blasio, on this same clip, is making lame excuses for this attempted murder. It is shameful that Mr. de Blasio was once a candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination.
On another thread here, there is a conversation about systemic racism in the Democratic Party. It is on full display in this video.
The cop behind the wheel of the vehicle in this video needs to be prosecuted for attempted murder — among a long list of other offenses — RIGHT NOW.
“Racism isn’t getting worse. it’s getting filmed.” Will Smith
Over the weekend, Joe Biden told a CHURCH congregation, of all things, that police should be trained to “shoot them in the leg instead of the heart”. Unbelievable? See for yourself.
Anybody who knows anything AT ALL about guns and police knows that the very FIRST lesson in handling a gun is that you don’t take a weapon from its holster unless the situation warrants deadly force. You ALWAYS shoot to kill or don’t shoot at all. Any time a gun is fired, it endangers everyone nearby no matter where it is aimed. It is hard enough to hit a body, never mind leg or arm. Any effort at shooting to maim instead of kill endangers everybody at the scene.
The only correct way to teach our police is to teach them to put away their weapon at a protest like this.
Police need to STOP SHOOTING BLACK PEOPLE!
This guy is a frigging DISASTER.
It is my understanding that shooting to disable rather than to kill is in fact a common and preferred use of a police weapon. The context is someone lunging at a cop.
I fear you are mistaken about what “shooting to disable” means in the context of police.
As I understand it, police are nearly always taught to “shoot to disable” a moving vehicle — often tires.
Police are nearly always trained to shoot to kill, as I explained above.
The idea that police can or should “shoot to wound” is a dangerous myth.
While some are joining the never-satisfied caucus I am genuinely struck by the contrast between the one who is President and the one who is acting like a President. The latter has emerged from his basement to heal and listen while the former has disappeared into the White House bunker on account of protests outside the gates.