Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 35
Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Harris for her words, and I want to thank her as the lead Senator on this bill. I want to thank her for her partnership and leadership. I also want to thank Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who has shown extraordinary commitment to this legislation as well. On the House side, I want to thank Bobby Rush, former Black Panther. I want to thank him for his leadership and generational commitment to racial justice in America.
I also want to recognize the tireless advocacy of Airickca Gordon- Taylor, who is the actual relative of Emmett Till and founder of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation. She was here the last time this bill was before this body. She is dead now. I know she is looking down and hoping that we don't disappoint her.
In February of 2019, this body did something historic--and I don't mean to be emotional. I am raw this week. But I stood here with Kamala and we wept. We talked about the hundreds of years--over a century, excuse me, of effort to pass legislation which was brought up and defeated time and again by this body by avowed segregationists. How proud I was that at a time when partisanship is high in this country we gathered together in one voice, 100 Senators, to pass this exact same bill, because there are good people in this body on both sides, and we were correcting a wrong of history.
Nobody in this body needs a lecture on lynching and how horrible it is. Everybody in this body abhors racism and believes that this violence is unjust. There are friends of mine here. Unanimously, we passed that legislation. We made history on this floor.
This is why I am confused because this bill has been passed unanimously, and here we are on a day of a memorial service for another person whose murder was condemned by people on both sides of the aisle. I have sat where the Presiding Officer is sitting, and I have watched the differences between the Republican leader and the Democratic leader. I don't go back that long in this body, but I have watched Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer disagree so deeply time and again, but, God, we came together and passed the bill unanimously. Mitch McConnell let the bill come to this floor, didn't try to block it.
My colleague Rand Paul was one of the first hands I shook on this Senate floor. He is my friend, and everything he said about his commitment to criminal justice reform is right. One of the first bills I wrote here I wrote with Rand Paul, and then he went further at another time like this when America was raw, when another unarmed Black man was shot. He went as far as to, in Time magazine, stand up and talk openly about the ProPublica data about a Black man in America being about 100 times more likely to be shot by the police than someone who is White.
He has said--and he is shaking his head, if I may recognize. He said that there must be something more going on there if it is that much. So I do not question--I do not question the sincerity of his convictions. I have had too many conversations with him to question his heart, but I am so raw today, of all days, that we are doing this--of all days, that we are doing this right now, having this discussion when, God, if this bill passed today, what that would mean for America; that this body and that body have now finally agreed because I know when Congressman White, the last Black person to serve in Congress before the God-awful fall of the backlash after Reconstruction fell. He gave this famous speech. We were talking about the Phoenix will rise; that one day Black people will serve in this body. And here we are in the Senate for the first time in history, when three African Americans serve together, Republican and Democratic, and we all came together on Kamala's bill
There is something about us that we knew it was something more than the legalistic issues my colleague now wants to bring up; that we are a nation that needs this historic healing. If we passed this, it would not only do something substantive to make a difference on the books of the American system, but, God, it would speak volumes to the racial pain and the hurt of generations.
I do not need my colleague, the Senator from Kentucky, to tell me about one lynching in this country. I have stood in the museum in Montgomery, AL, and watched African-American families weeping at the stories of pregnant women lynched in this country and their babies ripped out of them while this body did nothing. I can hear the screams, as this body's membership can, of the unanswered cries for justice by our ancestors. Every one of us is sensitive to that anguish. Everyone is sensitive to that pain, as is the Senator from Kentucky.
This week, the Senator from Kentucky mentioned a colleague, Justin Amash. I want to tell my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, he was only one of four Congressmen of a 435-Member body to vote against the anti-lynching bill. That means that this bill was supported by the leader of the Democrats, the Speaker of House. It was supported by the leader of the Republicans, the whip of the Republicans, the whip of the Democrats--400-plus votes supported this. Yet my colleague thinks this bill is wrong.
If this bill is wrong, then the Republican leadership of the House is wrong. If this bill is wrong, then the Democratic leadership of the House is wrong. If this bill is wrong, 99 Senators are wrong. If this bill is wrong, then the NAACP is wrong. If this bill is wrong, then the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is wrong. If this bill is wrong, then the Urban League of America is wrong, legal organizations, civil rights organizations, Democrats and Republicans. Tell me another time when 500-plus Congresspeople, Democrats, Republicans, House Members, and Senators came together in a chorus of conviction and said that now is the time in America that we condemn the dark history of our past and actually pass anti-lynchings legislation. And now one man--and I do not question his motives because I know his heart--one man--one man is standing in the way of the law of the land changing because of a difference of interpretation.
This doesn't talk about bruising someone. It is a difference of interpretation.
Does America need a win today on racial justice? Do the anguished cries of people in the streets?
I have had children break down with me this week wondering if this would be a country that values their lives as much as White people's lives. I had to explain to grown men this week that there is still hope in America; that we could make change in America; that we could grow and heal in America; that we could make this a more perfect Union.
Well, today is a day we can do it--to have one Member to yield for once, like he did in February of 2019, yield for 1 day and give America this win. Let us pass this piece of legislation today of all days. Let's give a headline tomorrow of something that will give hope to this country that we can get it right. It may not cure the ills that so many are protesting about, but, God, it could be a sign of hope.
I object on substance.
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, this is a bill that has already passed this body. Same bill, same language. Only four Members of the House of Representatives objected. Same bill, same language.
I have heard this objection. We disagree with this. The truth is, what is being proposed is not just opposed by me, but our Republican colleagues who are sponsoring this bill, in this body, oppose these corrections as well.
In addition to that, changes to this bill now would send it back to the House of Representatives. This is a tactic that will send this bill back over to the House, where again it would have to be voted on.
This idea that somehow someone would be brought up on lynching charges for a slapping is absurd, especially as you see, with hate crime legislation, how difficult that is even to prove.
So I am deeply disappointed by the objections we have heard that were not made manifest last year, in 2019, but somehow seem to be stopping it in 2020. One day in this Nation, this legislation will pass.
Perhaps it will have to wait until I am not here, until Senator Paul is not here, unless he decides to go back to the 2019 Senator Paul.
The question is, What side of history will we ultimately be on? I pray that it happens in this Congress. I pray that the President signs legislation against lynching. How historic that would be. But today it is not going to happen, obviously.
I am telling you right now, this celebration will come. This moment in American history will come. The frustrating thing for me is, at a time when this country hungers for common sense, racial reconciliation, an acknowledgement of our past and a looking forward to the better future, this will be one of the sad days where that possibility was halted.
As we all know, one of the great leaders that Republicans and Democrats all hail asked that question--How long will it take?--and the simple answer is not long because the truth crushed to earth will rise again; not long because you reap what you sow; not long because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
We will pass this legislation. I pray that the Members of this body, as we are right now, are the ones to do it.
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