Former Vice President Joe Biden visited Kenosha, Wisconsin on Thursday afternoon in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the protests and unrest that followed. Biden met with members of Blake's family and their attorneys for about an hour and spoke with Blake himself before holding a community meeting in a Kenosha church.
At that meeting, Biden listened to community members including a firefighter, a small business owner whose shop had been damaged and looted, and a local attorney. In his own remarks, Biden said of his past optimism that the United States had progressed toward racial justice, “I made a mistake about something. I thought you could defeat hate. Hate only hides. And when someone in authority breathes oxygen under that rock, it legitimizes those folks to come on out from under the rocks.”
Biden pledged, if elected, to create a White House commission on policing. “I'll bring everyone to the table,” he said. “Including police chiefs, including civil rights activists, including NAACP, including the Latino community. We're going to sit down there, and we're going to work it out.”
Also Thursday, Biden released a new digital ad, heavily featuring vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, on racism and racial justice.
Biden: Why in this nation do Black Americans wake up knowing that they can lose their life in the course of just living their life?
Harris: Part of the point of freedom is to be free from brutality, from injustice, from racism, and all of its manifestations.
Biden: We have to let people know that we not only understand their struggle, but we understand the fact they deserve to be treated with dignity.
Clip of Biden speaking: They’ve got to know we’re listening.
Harris: Reforming policing in this country means creating a national standard on use of force and conditioning federal funds for police departments on adoption of that standard. It’s about reining in qualified immunity. We hold police officers accountable.
Biden: We can’t turn away. Now is the time for racial justice. I believe with every fiber in my being, we have such an opportunity now to change people’s lives for the better. It’s about who we are, what we believe, and maybe most importantly, who we want to be.
