WASHINGTON, D.C. ― With the country in crisis over the police killing of George Floyd, Joe Biden’s remarks about the incident at a historically Black church in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday, weren’t what protesters wanted to hear.
As Black Lives Matter protesters and their allies call for defunding the police, ending racist law enforcement practices and holding police accountable at a federal level, the remark by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee reverberated among young progressive activists as yet another politician falling short.
’” Biden, whose campaign has a Plan for Black America, urged Congress on Tuesday to pass police reform.
The protests sparked by Floyd’s death present yet another opportunity for the Democratic Party to show activists and young Black voters that it is listening to them.
“We only take action when something has happened and that action is generally temporary and changes when political wind changes and when political leadership changes,” Simpson said of the Democratic Party’s response to police brutality, noting that many of these protests are taking place in Democratic-run cities that have long failed to reckon with their problematic policing practices.
