I was deeply moved by the reading, and felt it was critical in this moment that a United States Senator from the Deep South stand on the Senate floor and declare that Black Lives Matter.
George Floyd’s cries of ‘I can’t breathe’ were not just the cries of an innocent man pleading for his life, but the cries of so many of our fellow Americans that are killed by police, choked by a healthcare system that denies them access to quality healthcare, and in Dr. King’s words are smothered in “an airtight cage of poverty,” who cannot breath the fresh air of affordable housing, education and economic opportunities.
Maybe even more so than the dogs or fire hoses in Birmingham or the beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama the video of George Floyd’s last moments were a confluence of events that gave our nation an image of itself that it could no longer bear.
And how the poor and lower income in Alabama and the Deep South, both Black and White, are connected, as both suffer from healthcare, educational and economic disparities.
In response to the protests that are taking place across this country today where voices and t-shirts and facemasks proclaim and insist that Black Lives Matter, and of course they do, but we will not be a country where we are all truly equal and where justice is for all until we can all say the words Black Lives Matter and mean it.
