TAXPAYER FIRST ACT OF 2019--Continued

Floor Speech

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Ms. SMITH. Mr. President, last week I attended a memorial service for my constituent Mr. George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police. Like so many Minnesotans, my heart is broken for Mr. Floyd and his family and for a Black community that has been here too many times. I will once again add my voice to the chorus demanding that the police officers responsible for his death face justice.

But I keep finding myself thinking that Mr. Floyd's death wasn't just a tragedy and it wasn't just a crime. It was a failure. It was our failure. Systemic racism is built into every level of our society, and for 400 years, Black and Brown and Indigenous people have paid its price.

Racism isn't just evil, though it is. It is dangerous. And racism isn't just a moral issue, though it is. It is a public health issue. And the death of Mr. Floyd, like the deaths of so many Black and Brown people before him, is an indictment of our failure as policymakers to fulfill our first and most important duty, which is to protect the lives of the people whom we serve.

Black lives matter. We need to say it loud and often, with strength and with purpose, and if we truly mean it, then we need to be very clear about why it is that so many Black and Brown lives are being stolen, and that means we can't just point to systemic racism writ large. We have to talk about the police.

This is about the impunity with which police officers are allowed to kill Black and Brown Americans. This is about a society in which police departments have become fundamentally unaccountable institutions. This is about the fact that law enforcement in America does not deliver equal justice for all.

The institutional racism that plagues American law enforcement is real. This is not just a few bad cops. It is the entire culture of policing--a culture that far too often encourages violence, condones abuse, and resists reforms and accountability at every turn.

This culture kills, and it will continue to do so unless we stop it. If we can't see that, if we can't say it, if we aren't ready to use our power and our privilege to address this unforgiveable failure, well, then we might as well say nothing at all.

So why is it so hard for us to talk about these issues? Why is it so hard to even admit that there is something dangerously wrong about the role that police play in our society?

Well, I think, in part, it is because of the respect that we have for police officers themselves. We ask these men and women to put their lives on the line every single day. Their job is to run to trouble, and hundreds of thousands of police officers in my community and in all of yours fulfill their duty with skill and with courage every day.

But I think there is something else lurking behind our inaction. The vast majority of policymakers, especially here in Washington, are White, and the vast majority of the interactions that White people have with police officers are positive.

When we are scared or threatened or hurt, well, police officers come to help. And when we hear the siren or we see a blue uniform, we breathe a sigh of relief, and it is uncomfortable for White people to acknowledge that this feeling of relief is really about privilege. It is uncomfortable to imagine giving up some piece of that privilege.

After all, we all want clean, safe streets. We all want quiet, orderly neighborhoods. We want to be able to call 911 when we are in danger and know that the police officers will rush to our aid.

We may even catch ourselves worrying that a police force held accountable for its abuse of power against Black and Brown bodies will be a police force a little less empowered to protect us.

Often, when White people talk about racism, we define it as a hatred that lurks within people's hearts, and then we search within ourselves and we can feel satisfied that we are free from prejudice. But racism, colleagues, is manifested as behavior--behavior that hurts, that kills. Who even knows what is in ``how to change hearts and minds''? But we do know, I think, let's say: Let's start with changing behavior.

So this is something that I think about a lot as a Minnesotan. In my home State we pride ourselves on our legacy of progressive activism. We believe deeply in civic participation, and we are proud to have the highest voter turnout in the whole country. We are home to a diverse array of communities--African American, Somali, Hmong, Latinx, Native, and more--all people who belong here just as much as anyone else.

And we are home to some of the Nation's worst racial disparities. It is not just that Black men are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely to be assaulted and killed by police officers. A Black or Brown or Native child growing up in the neighborhood where George Floyd was murdered can expect worse education outcomes, worse health, fewer opportunities than a White child that lives just a few miles down the road.

The truth is that for all of the progress that we have made in America over the course of my lifetime and for all of the hearts and minds that have changed, racism was built into our systems from the very beginning. While it is still present in everything from healthcare to education, to housing and environmental policy, it jumps off the page when you look at our Nation's criminal justice system.

Consider this. African Americans make up less than 14 percent of the population, but they account for 23 percent of fatal police shootings and nearly one-third of our prison population.

Studies repeatedly show that Black people and White people use drugs at roughly the same rate, but Black people are more than twice as likely to be arrested for drug offenses and nearly four times as likely when it comes to marijuana.

No matter where you look, our criminal justice system unfairly targets Black and Brown and Native people, threatening their freedom and often their lives, and you can't just blame that on racist cops. That is us doing that. Even if we harbor no hatred in our hearts, we are responsible for the racist impact of a system that was built historically by White Americans to serve White Americans.

We are the beneficiaries of a system that killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Atatiana Jefferson, Sandra Bland, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Rekia Boyd, Jessica Hernandez, Eric Salgado, Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, and so many others.

So that is a hard thing to admit, but right now hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens are demanding that we face this ugly truth.

The people marching in our streets have watched us forgive ourselves time and again for failing Black and Brown Americans, like George Floyd, and they are angry, they are grieving, and they are exhausted, and this time they will not be denied.

It may make us uncomfortable to hear this anger, to see the images on television, to experience this turmoil when our country is going through so much already, but that is the whole point of protest. This crisis has long deserved our attention, and because we withheld that attention, these protesters are demanding it now.

We cannot claim to support the goal of justice if we object to being confronted with the reality of injustice. We cannot walk away from this moral crisis. We have done that too many times after too many deaths, and every time we do, we fail the next Black or Brown American who dies in police custody.

I just can't live with that. We have to make a change, and this time, White people have to get past our discomfort. Black and Brown people have been trying for too long to tell us that systemic racism isn't just limiting their opportunities. It is killing their children.

To the communities of color in Minnesota, whom I am proud to represent, I want you to know that I hear you and that I will do everything I can to make sure that everyone here in Washington hears you too.

Most of all, we have to devote our time, our energy, our resources, our platforms, our power, and our privilege to helping this movement succeed.

As Pastor Billy Russell from the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Minneapolis said to me, ``we need to make it right. It's not right now, but we need to make it right.''

I want to tell my Minnesota community, my colleagues, and the American people exactly how I want to use my power and my privilege to help make it right.

In the coming weeks, my office will be moving forward with legislative action focused on three priorities: first, fundamentally transforming the role of the police in our society from the way we fund and train and equip officers to the relationships between departments and the communities that they serve. We must rethink the responsibilities we assign to the police and the authority we give them to fulfill those responsibilities. We need to imagine and reinvent American policing from the ground up.

Second, we must fix the systems in police departments that obstruct accountability and transparency at every turn. Our system effectively puts cops above the law by insulating them from civil and criminal liability for their actions. This leads people of color to conclude that they can't trust the police, and it leads the police to conclude that they will never face consequences for crossing the line. They are both right, and this means something is wrong. If we want to change the way officers act, we need to change the rules that shield them from accountability. Accountability and preventing this misconduct from being ignored will not only hold police departments responsible for perpetuating violence and unequal justice, but it will help prevent violence and injustice the next time.

The Justice in Policing Act, led by my colleagues Senator Harris and Senator Booker, is an important step forward. I am proud to support it, and I urge all of my colleagues to join in. Racism is about behavior. We can't legislate what police officers believe, but we can and we must legislate how they behave.

Third, restoring the communities that have been torn apart by injustice--in the Twin Cities, neighbors are already coming together to clean up the damage sustained by the unrest and upheaval of the last 2 weeks, but the task of making our communities whole goes far beyond repairing the physical damage. We need a new and sustained push for racial and economic justice, not just law enforcement but in healthcare and education and in housing and in environmental policy.

The people I spoke to when I was home last weekend are grieving, they are angry, and they are hurt, but most of all, they are exhausted. Communities of color have spent years fighting to be heard, fighting for justice, fighting for resources, fighting for survival. As their Senator, it is my job to carry that fight here to Washington in the Senate.

Four hundred years of structural racism cannot be overcome with a single piece of legislation or even by a single generation of legislators, but we can't let the enormity of the task blind us to the urgency of this work.

The last 2 weeks have been extraordinarily difficult for Minnesotans and for our country. But, throughout history, the hardest times have always been the times of the greatest progress. I choose to find purpose in making sure that, in this moment, we lead to real progress towards justice and equality.

That is why I came to the floor today. No statement of intent, no matter how thoughtful, will change the reality of this crisis, but I want this statement to be on the record, part of my record as a U.S. Senator. I want to be accountable for these commitments. I want Minnesotans to hold me accountable. I want to be a part of holding this body and all of us in the Senate accountable.

This, then, will be the first in a series of floor speeches I intend to deliver examining the systemic injustice that plagues American policing and plagues Native, Black, and Brown communities more broadly. It will be about the steps we need to take to address this injustice: redefining the role of the police, reinforcing accountability for police officers, and restoring the communities I am so blessed to serve.

This is a big fight. The scale of the injustice is overwhelming. It can be hard to know where to start, but the people who took to the streets last week--in the Twin Cities, in communities large and small across Minnesota, and in cities across this country--are a movement for change, and they are showing us the path forward. This path requires us to be courageous, requires us to be humble, and requires us to be uncomfortable, but it is a path rooted in love and in trust and in hope.

We saw it in the way the protesters brought joy to the most serious of fights they faced. We saw it in the way they stood up to those who would do damage to their communities and to their cause. We saw it in the way they kept their focus, even in the face of unimaginable brutality.

So many Minnesotans have shown such courage and grace. I am proud to be your Senator, and I am proud to be your neighbor. I am committing myself to the path that you are forging. I hope my constituents, my colleagues in the Senate, and all of my fellow Americans will do the same.

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