America has been issued a wake-up call
Ican’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” George Floyd’s last words — but they didn’t die with him. They’re still being heard echoing all across this nation.
They speak to a nation where, too often, just the color of your skin puts your life at risk. They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to the virus, and 40 million have filed for unemployment, with the disproportionate number of those deaths and job losses concentrated in black and brown communities. And they speak to a nation where every day, millions of people, not at the moment of losing their life but in the course of living their life, are saying to themselves, “I can’t breathe.”
It’s a wake-up call to our nation . ... It’s not the first time we’ve heard those words. They’re the same words we heard from Eric Garner when his life was taken away six years ago. But it’s time to listen to those words, to try to understand them, to respond to them, respond with action. Our country is crying out for leadership — leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together, leadership that can recognize the pain and deep grief of communities that have had a knee on their neck for a long time.
There’s no place for violence, no place for looting or destroying property or burning churches or destroying businesses, many of them built by the very people of color who for the first time in their lives are beginning to realize their dreams and build wealth for their families. Nor is it acceptable for our police, sworn to protect and serve all people, to escalate tension and resort to excessive violence.
We need to distinguish between legitimate, peaceful protest and opportunistic, violent destruction . ...
The history of this nation teaches us that in some of our darkest moments of despair, we’ve made some of our greatest progress . ... The 13th, 14th, 15th amendments followed the Civil War. The greatest economic growth in world history grew out of the
Great Depression. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and ’68, and the Voting Rights Act of ’65 came in the tracks of Bull Connor’s vicious dogs. To paraphrase the Rev. William Barber, “It’s in the morning we find hope. It’s in the morning we find hope when we mourn.”
But it’s going to take more than talk. We had talked before, we had protest before. We’ve got to now vow to make this at least an era of action and reverse the systemic racism with long overdue concrete changes. The action will not be completed in the first 100 days of my presidency, if I’m fortunate enough to be elected, or even in my entire term. It’s going to take the work of a generation.
But if this agenda will take time to complete, it should not wait for the first 100 days of my presidency to get started. A down payment on what is long overdue should come now . ...
I ask every American to look at where we are now, and think anew: Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Is this what we pass on to our kids’ and grandkids’ lives? Fear and finger-pointing rather than hope and the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety? Self-absorption and selfishness?
Or do we want to be the America we know we can be. The America we know in our hearts we could be and should be.
The presidency is a big job. Nobody will get everything right. And I won’t either.
But I promise you this. I won’t traffic in fear and division. I won’t fan the flames of hate.
I will seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country — not use them for political gain.
I’ll do my job and take responsibility. I won’t blame others. I’ll never forget that the job isn’t about me.
It’s about you.