George Floyd's Brother Compares 'People of Color' to Birds
Protecting black Americans should be as simple as protecting the birds, according to the brother of George Floyd.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden met at the White House with the family of Floyd, who died last May while being arrested by Minneapolis police. Former officer Derek Chauvin has since been convicted of murdering Floyd.
Philonise Floyd spoke with the media after the meeting with Biden.
“If you can make federal laws to protect the bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color,” he said.
“If you can make federal laws to protect the bird which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color,” Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, says shortly after meeting with Pres. Biden. https://t.co/LsJ4ub2DFS pic.twitter.com/2XFJ8Spn6T
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 25, 2021
The post-meeting news conference included Floyd’s daughter Gianna, 7, leading the entourage in a chant of “Say his name” as adults in the group raised fists and called out, “George Floyd!”
Family attorney Justin Miller used the opportunity to vent his frustration that a police reform bill Biden said would be passed by Tuesday still lingers in Congress, according to the New York Post.
“There have been other bills that have been passed in the last three months protecting different groups of people. This group of people needs to be protected too and this started a long time ago. There are some things that started a lot sooner that got protected a lot faster,” Miller said.
Biden said Tuesday that he will visit Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 1 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a violent race riot that resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 36 and 300 people — a day that came to be known as the “Tulsa race massacre.”
Biden said Floyd’s death unified America.
“His murder launched a summer of protest we hadn’t seen since the Civil Rights era in the ‘60s — protests that peacefully unified people of every race and generation to collectively say enough of the senseless killings,” he said in a statement posted on the White House website.
“Last month’s conviction of the police officer who murdered George was another important step forward toward justice. But our progress can’t stop there.”
“To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between the vast majority of the men and women who wear the badge honorably and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. We can and must have both accountability and trust and in our justice system,” Biden said.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is the chief Republican senator negotiating with Democrats over terms of the bill, said progress is taking shape.
“We continue to work on the process, and I think we have good, good progress over the weekend I thought, and I think we can see the end of the tunnel,” Scott said Monday, according to Fox News.
Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey agreed.
“We made a lot of progress over the weekend. So, we still have a lot of work to do. But the great thing about this bill is that, that everybody wants to get something really meaningful done,” Booker said. “And I was grateful for the amount of work that we’ve done. “
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said negotiations are “inside the 20-yard line.”
“When people try to get to yes, they normally do,” Graham said.
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