Biden, in Kenosha, hails fight for racial progress
Trump has also visited Kenosha
KENOSHA, Wis. — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told residents in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that the turmoil their city has experienced in recent weeks over a police shooting and protests that turned violent can be part of an awakening that helps the United States confront centuries of systemic racism and social discord.
“We’re finally now getting to the point where we’re going to be addressing the original sin of this country, 400 years old … slavery and all the vestiges of it,” Biden said at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, where he met with community leaders after a private, hour-long session with police shooting victim Jacob Blake and his family.
Blake, a Black man, remains hospitalized after being shot in the back seven times by a Kenosha police officer while authorities were trying to arrest him. The shooting is the latest high-profile police encounter with a Black man to spark protests that swelled nationwide in May after George Floyd was killed by white Minneapolis officer in May.
Biden is spending Thursday in Wisconsin, two days after President Donald Trump traveled to Kenosha. Biden says he is seeking common ground that Trump is incapable of reaching with “law and order” rhetoric and repeated refusals to acknowledge racism confronting Americans with black and brown skin.
“I can’t say if tomorrow God made me president, I can’t guarantee you everything gets solved in four years,” Biden said. But “it would be a whole better, we’d get a whole lot further down the road” if Trump isn’t re-elected.
“There’s certain things worth losing over,” he concluded, “and this is something worth losing over if you have to — but we’re not going to lose.”
Before traveling to Kenosha, Biden spent more than an hour in Milwaukee in a private meeting with Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., his siblings, and one of his attorneys, B’Ivory LaMarr. Blake’s mother Julia Jackson and another attorney, Ben Crump, joined by phone.
The younger Blake participated in the meeting by telephone “from his hospital bed,” Crump said. Blake, 29, shared the pain he is enduring and Biden commiserated. The family has said that Blake is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot seven times in the back by police as they tried to arrest him on Aug. 23.
Crump said Blake’s mother led everyone in prayer for his recovery. Biden treated Blake “as a person worthy of consideration and prayer,” the lawyer added.
At the church meeting, Biden heard searing commentary from community members.
Porsche Bennett, an organizer for Black Lives Activists Kenosha, told Biden she’s “tired” at just 31 years old. “For so many decades we’ve been shown we don’t matter,” she said.
The Rev. Jonathan Barker, pastor of the church, opened the meeting with a prayer asking for “justice for Jacob Blake” and for God to “anoint” a national leader in November who will “seek justice, love mercy … and love their neighbor.”
A practicing Catholic, Biden ended the prayer making the sign of the cross. He then heard from Kenosha residents discussing the need to address systemic racism so that society will function peacefully.