Biden meets family of man shot by police
Presidential challenger Joe Biden visits Kenosha, Wisconsin to console Jacob Blake’ s loved ones and help the community heal.
Democratic KENOSHA, WIS. — presidential nominee Joe Biden began a visit to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Thursday by meeting with the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man whose shooting by a white police officer sparkeddays of sometimes violent protests.
Biden spent more than an hour in private 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.
Crump said the younger Blake participated in the meeting by telephone “from his hospital bed.” 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.
Crumpsaid Blake’smother led everyone in prayer for his recovery.
Biden followed his meeting with Blake’s family and representatives with a community discussion at Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha. The gathering included business and civic leaders and at least two representatives of law enforcement.
At the church, Biden said of Trump: “No president’s ever going to say ‘they’re very fine people on both sides.’ No president has ever said anything like that ... It legitimizes the dark side of human nature.”
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 Novemberwho will “seek justice, love mercy ... and love their neighbor.”
Biden, a practicing Catholic, ended the prayer making the sign of the cross. He thenheardfromKenosharesidents discussing the need to address systemic racism so that society— including commerce— will function peacefully. “I look at the buildings in our community that are gone,” said Barb DeBerge, owner of DeBerge Framing & Gallery, which still stands. “I just I don’t think I really grieved asmuch as I should because being a business owner, I have to keep going, I have to keep working.”
Trump didn’t meet with the Blake family when he visited Kenosha earlier this week.
Reflecting that his trip comes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden wore a mask as he arrived in Milwaukee. Yet he broke his usual health protocols to shake hands with a campaign staffer.
Kenosha was calm ahead of Biden’s visit. By midday, a small group of Biden supporters, some Black Lives Matter activists and a Trump supporter had gathered at a city center park that had been a focal point of demonstrations for days. When the president visitedKenosha on Tuesday, a fewhundred proand anti-Trump protesters convened at the spot.
“No one’s perfect,” said Michelle Stauder, a 60-yearold retired Kenosha school teacher sittingona barricade erected earlier and clutching a Biden-Harris campaign sign. “But I’m excited about Biden. And I like that he’s here spreading the word of peace and rebuilding.”
Kenneth Turner stood nearby with a Trump-Pence yard sign under his arm. “Everyone is blamingTrump for everything,” the 50-yearold Kenosha man said. “But problems here have been around a long time before Trump.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said Thursday that he’d asked both Biden and Trump not to visit. “Iwould prefer that no one be here, be it candidate Trump or candidate Biden,” Evers said in a news conference.