Executive Calendar
Floor Speech
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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 1938 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, first he said ``I can't breathe.'' Then he called out ``Mama'' for his late mother.
Last Monday, in broad daylight, George Floyd was slowly, publicly killed by someone whose responsibility it was to protect and serve. Officer Derek Chauvin, who has since been rightfully fired, spent about 3 minutes ignoring Floyd's cries of pain, refusing to move his knee from Floyd's neck, refusing to let up, to get up, even as the man under him begged for life and lost consciousness. Then he spent roughly another 6 minutes after Floyd had fallen silent ignoring the number of growing of witnesses who begged him to see the obvious--that the man under his knee was unresponsive, that he was dying.
As a mom, there are not words to describe the visceral, gut-wrenching feeling of hearing someone cry out for their mother in a moment of such desperation.
George Floyd's death was unnecessary and heartbreaking. It was a tragedy, but horrifyingly, it was not an anomaly.
From Eric Garner, who told us 6 years ago that he, too, could not breathe, to Tamir Rice, who never made it to his 13th birthday, the senseless killing of unarmed Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement has become an all-too-common occurrence. The horror of the moment, then the outrage and sadness and, yes, anger that follow have turned into a pattern that too many people appear to believe is normal. It is not, and we cannot--must not--let ourselves become numb to the reality in front of us.
George Floyd was someone's son who with his dying breath called out for his mother who had previously passed away. He had a 6-year-old daughter who will not only grow up without a father but knowing that she, too, would face the same danger every day just because of the color of her skin.
George Floyd was born in a country built on the belief that we are all created equal, but he died in a country that still has not fully realized that we must all be treated equally as well.
It is long, long past time for action. We needed it before George Floyd; we needed it before Breonna Taylor, before Laquan McDonald, and before countless others were killed too.
We need real leaders who listen to Americans' cries for help and give those fighting for justice a platform to be heard. But sadly, although unsurprisingly, Donald Trump has done just the opposite over the past few days, trampling First Amendment rights by ordering Federal law enforcement to assault those who stood in the way of his photo-op, exploiting our military and disrespecting our troops by using them as a cudgel to silence our neighbors and further divide our country.
Donald Trump may be our Commander in Chief, but tear-gassing peaceful protestors is not leadership; it is cowardice. Threatening military force against Americans exercising their constitutional right is not Presidential; it is tin-pot dictatorial.
You know, in moments like these, it is more important than ever to recognize the privilege that many of us have. I will never be forced to sit my daughters down and have the same talk with them that Black mothers have with their children--especially their sons--about how exactly to move and speak when interacting with police officers to preemptively reassure them that they pose no danger; or about the fundamental racism that mars our society that will question their motives and their right to be somewhere just because of the shade of their skin; or about the systemic biases that lead too many Americans, including those in positions of power, to view unarmed Black children as more threatening than White adults holding semiautomatic rifles.
I know that I will never be able to fully comprehend the fear that those parents must face every time their child steps outside, every time they dare to walk to school or play on the playground or buy some Skittles while Black. But what I do know is the burden of all this pain and trauma cannot fall and should not fall on those families alone. The responsibility, the work, the bending of the moral arc of the universe toward justice cannot just be put on the backs of the very people who have been feeling its weight this entire time.
The systemic injustices in our country are not going away by themselves, and they will not be solved if too many good, decent Americans remain silent. If we choose to avoid difficult realities and tough conversations simply because they make us uncomfortable, we are failing to do our part in achieving anything close to a more perfect union.
Those of us who have benefited from the privileges we have been afforded by society, we have a duty to recognize the costs borne by those who have been denied those same privileges for generations.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that we must do more. On a personal level, for me, that has included spending time with both of my daughters, discussing what true justice and equality means and how to practice it so that if they grow up to become police officers themselves, they don't reflexively treat Black Americans as more dangerous than anyone else; so that when they see a young Black man shopping, their first thought would never be that he is shoplifting; so that no matter what they do in life, they judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
My girls may be just 5 and 2, but it is never too early for us to talk to our kids about treating others how we want to be treated because our neighbors, our American brothers and sisters, need more vocal allies in this fight. I hope to raise two of those allies in my two girls. Today, I hope to find 99 fellow allies in my colleagues here in the Senate. It is on each of us lucky enough to serve under this great Capitol dome to use this moment to fight for justice and accountability for those families like George Floyd's who had someone so cruelly and needlessly stolen from them.
So I have come to the floor today to request unanimous consent on S. 1938, the Police Training and Independent Review Act, the second bill I ever introduced into this august body more than 3 years ago. This bill would demand that local law enforcement agencies change use-of-force policies and that every American receive fair treatment under the law-- commonsense policies that I believe responsible law enforcement officers would welcome so they could better protect and serve their communities.
It would establish a new grant program so States can implement racial bias training at police academies to help officers deescalate tense situations. It would also encourage States to establish a transparent system where independent prosecutors review police uses of force and prosecute officers who break the laws they were entrusted to enforce, because local prosecutors do have a bias. They rely on the same police departments to win other cases, which is why it is so critical that we let outside independent prosecutors do the investigating and prosecuting of our law enforcement officers who do not follow the law themselves instead.
For me, it comes down to this: We cannot let ourselves accept that, in the United States of America, in the year 2020, Black men are still being publicly executed without judge or jury. For about 9 minutes last Monday, somebody's son and somebody's father was forced to know he was dying and forced to beg for his life until he couldn't beg anymore.
George Floyd cannot breathe anymore. So it is on those of us lucky enough to still be here today, to still be breathing, to use every breath we have to fight for the justice that he was robbed of on that street in Minneapolis last week. I know I will, and I hope every other American will join me.
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