Black Americans Have a Message for Democrats: Not Being Trump Is Not Enough
Astead W. Herndon
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The New York Times
COLUMBIA, S.C. — In an on-camera address after a week of destructive protests, former Vice President Joe Biden pleaded with his audience to imagine life for black people in America. Imagine, he said, “if every time your husband or son, wife or daughter left the house, you feared for their safety.” Imagine the police called on you for sitting in Starbucks.
“The anger and frustration and the exhaustion, it’s undeniable,” he said.
Exhaustion. For many black Americans across the country, what a year this has been. The coronavirus pandemic has continued to disproportionately kill black people, and a spate of high profile killings in recent months in Georgia, Kentucky and Minnesota, the latter two at the hands of the police, led to widespread demonstrations nationwide.
Protests shook more than three dozen cities Saturday as crowds expressed outrage over the death of George Floyd, a black security guard who was killed in police custody in Minneapolis. Demonstrators shut down freeways, set fires and battled police batons and tear gas, the pain and frustration of the moment spilling out into the streets.
In Columbia, the city where Biden delivered his victory speech after the South Carolina primary just over three months ago, demonstrators Saturday said they were demanding more than what it seemed like an election in November would deliver. Not only justice for the death of Floyd but also change in political and economic power that would prevent the death of another black person in police custody, another brutal video going viral.
“I’m tired of coming out here,” said Devean Moon, a 21-year-old Columbia resident, one of hundreds who participated in the peaceful protests in the city. “I’m tired of feeling forced to do all this.”
It dawned on Sierra Moore, 24, who attended the protests carrying a homemade sign that read “No Justice, No Peace,” that she and her grandmother have been protesting the same issues over the course of a century.
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- In an on-camera address after a week of destructive protests, former Vice President Joe Biden pleaded with his audience to imagine life for black people in America. Imagine, he said, "if every time your husband or son, wife or daughter left the house, you feared for their safety
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