When activist Tamika Mallory joined a roster of celebrities and social justice advocates Friday at a news conference in downtown Minneapolis, it wasn’t to advocate for turning the other cheek, and it shouldn’t have been. The tens of thousands of protestors across the nation who would amass between Friday and Sunday to protest the violent death of George Floyd needed something more.
Seeking justice and fueled by centuries of enslavement, police brutality, and racial profiling, protestors took to the streets in situations that soon erupted in violence. Mallory’s words seemed to capture the very pulse of a movement that, despite what White House National Security adviser Robert O’Brien told CNN Sunday, is about more than rooting out “a few bad apples.”
Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis cop, kneeled on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes while he told the officer he couldn't breathe, according to The New York Times. Floyd, a forgery suspect, ended up dying in the incident that other officers either watched or assisted Chauvin in, viral video shows. And that kind of police brutality has become so normalized that a white woman breaking park rules in New York’s Central Park assumed she needn’t do anything more than mention that the person she was in conflict with was African American to weaponize police against the man.
Still, when asked whether Floyd’s death and the numerous other unarmed Black men killed at the hands of police are indicative of systemic racism, O’Brien said “no, I don’t think there’s systemic racism.”
“There’s a few bad apples that are giving law enforcement a terrible name,” he said.
Mallory, who helped lead the Women’s March of 2017, obviously knows better. “This is a coordinated activity happening across this nation, and so we are in a state of emergency. Black people are dying in a state of emergency,” she said in her speech. “We can not look at this as an isolated incident.”
More from Mallory’s speech:
The reason why buildings are burning are not just for our brother George Floyd. They're burning down because people here in Minnesota are saying to people in New York, to people in California, to people in Memphis, to people all across this nation ‘enough is enough,’ and we are not responsible for the mental illness that has been inflicted upon our people by the American government, institutions and those people who are in positions of power.
I don’t give a damn if they burn down Target because Target should be on the streets with us calling for the justice that our people deserve. Where was AutoZone at the time when Philando Castile was shot in a car, which is what they actually represent? Where were they? So if you are not coming to the people’s defense, then don’t challenge us when young people and other people who are frustrated and instigated by the people who you pay. You are paying instigators to be among our people out there throwing rocks, breaking windows, and burning down buildings. And so young people are responding to that. They are enraged, and there’s an easy way to stop it. Arrest the cops. Charge the cops. Charge all the cops, not just some of them, not just here in Minneapolis. Charge them in every city across America where our people are being murdered. Charge them everywhere. That’s the bottom line. Charge the cops. Do your job. Do what you say this country is supposed to be about the land of the free for all. It has not been free for Black people, and we are tired.
Don’t talk to us about looting. Y’all are the looters. America has looted Black people. America looted the Native Americans when they first came here. So looting is what you do. We learned it from you. We learned violence from you. We learned violence from you. The violence was what we learned from you. So if you want us to do better, than damnit you do better.
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