By Race Forward, June 2, 2020
In the days since four Minneapolis Police Department officers killed George Floyd, hundreds of demonstrations have broken out around the country. Race Forward stands in solidarity with the millions who have marched to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and for those Black lives who have been taken prematurely by police brutality. We join their condemnation of all forms of racist violence, whether state or state-sanctioned or from individuals and groups. We join the call for the arrest and prosecution of all four officers involved in this merciless murder.
We recognize that these protests took place in a week when a white woman in New York City’s Central Park called police on a Black man who had only asked her to leash her dog in a section of the park where that was required. We have witnessed police across the country—in the name of “public safety” and the protection of property—brutalizing and arresting peaceful demonstrators, including children and the elderly, and firing rubber bullets at demonstrators, journalists, and bystanders. We have heard our President urge leaders to “dominate” protestors. We see him pressing the National Guard and the U.S. military into service against Americans who march to oppose racist violence.
All of this is occurring as a pandemic has taken more than 100,000 lives, disproportionately those of Black people, Indigenous people, other people of color, immigrants, and the incarcerated. Many have been deemed “essential” workers, and required to work without being provided the gear or equipment to protect themselves from the virus. They are deemed exploitable and expendable. Their forced labor is valued over their precious lives. Or they are simply abandoned. Over 40 million Americans are unemployed. Black and Latinx people have been twice as likely as whites to lose their jobs.
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