Biden is describing the “convergence of factors” that led to the guilty verdict today.
He thanks the “young woman with a smartphone camera”, who filmed George Floyd’s death. He thanks the officers who testified against Chauvin “instead of just closing ranks”.
“For so many, it feels like it took all of that for the judicial system to deliver basic accountability,” he says.
He says black people “don’t have to wake up knowing that they can lose their life in the very course of living their life”.
No one above the law
Continuing on the theme of accountability, President Joe Biden says that “no one should be above the law”.
“Today’s verdict sends that message,” he says. “But it’s not enough.”
The Democratic president rails against “systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing and in our criminal justice system more broadly”.
“State and local law enforcement need to step up, so does the federal government,” he says, mentioning a police reform bill named after George Floyd.
Democrats last year thwarted a police reform bill put forward by a black Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, arguing that it did not go far enough.
A frustrated Scott recently pointed out that his bill overlapped with many of the proposals in the legislation now being pushed by Democrats.
Closing his remarks, Joe Biden recalls George Floyd’s final words: “I can’t breathe.”
“We can’t let those words die with him,” Biden says, clasping his hands and leaning down into the microphone.
“We have to keep hearing those words. We must not turn away, we can’t turn away,” he says. “We have a change to begin to change the trajectory in this country.”
“May God bless you, and may God bless George Floyd and his family.”
Source: BBC NEWS
