Warren Backs Black Lives Matter: We Haven’t ‘Made Enough Progress’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks at the 2015 Massachusetts Democratic State Convention on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015 in Springfield, Mass. (Dave Roback/The Republican via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called on Americans to focus on racial justice and expressed her support for the Black Lives Matter movement in a Sunday speech at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston.

Warren referenced the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) focus on civil rights issues and said, “If his life and death had a meaning, it was that we should not hate but love one another; we should use our powers not to create conditions of oppression that lead to violence, but conditions of freedom that lead to peace.”

She said that since the Civil Rights Act, the United States has not come close enough to equality.

“Fifty years later, we have made real progress toward creating the conditions of freedom — but we have not made enough progress,” she said, according to her prepared remarks.

“Fifty years later, violence against African Americans has not disappeared. Consider law enforcement. The vast majority of police officers sign up so they can protect their communities. They are part of an honorable profession that takes risks every day to keep us safe. We know that. But we also know – and say – the names of those whose lives have been treated with callous indifference,” Warren continued, referencing Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray and Michael Brown.

Warren called for a focus on violence, voting rights, and economic justice for black Americans.

“I speak today with the full knowledge that I have not personally experienced and can never truly understand the fear, the oppression, and the pain that confronts African Americans every day,” she said. “But none of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets.”

“The first civil rights battles were hard fought. But they established that Black Lives Matter. That Black Citizens Matter. That Black Families Matter,” Warren said as she ended her speech.

DeRay Mckesson, a leader with Black Lives Matter, praised Warren’s speech in an interview with the Washington Post.

“Senator Warren’s speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America’s commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism has played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights,” he said. “And Warren, better than any political leader I’ve yet heard, understands the protests as a matter of life or death — that the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence and that the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma.”

Notable Replies

  1. We’ve had a couple of officer involved shootings here in Vermont the last few weeks and it has been remarked that the two people who were shot survived. Apparently our officers are trained to stop shooting when the suspect is down.

    Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be willing to charge police officers with taking kill shots when the suspect is down, nor are we willing to charge them when they don’t get medical teams out to the shooting immediately. Given that we also don’t seem willing, as a society as a whole, to change laws on that front, it may take a while before we see any change at all.

  2. Tell me again that Warren isn’t running. She is becoming the face of the Democratic party.

  3. Love how this simple cartoon points out the obvious:

  4. This only adds to the reasons why she was always my first choice to run for the nomination. I’ll take her as Senate leader as a consolation prize, though. I think with Shumer re:Iran, she could definitely be #2 to Durbin.

  5. Avatar for tao tao says:

    Not even close yet; at this point only Black deaths seem to matter. Our value of human life is seriously out of line. It is outrageous that a political party would promote such a policy, but there they are, suppressing votes, cutting education and health care, and imprisoning men and women who might otherwise raise families and go on to be productive citizens.
    Until all lives matter, none do.

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