Friend,

Like many Americans, I’m heartbroken and outraged this week, after George Floyd was brutally killed by racist police officers in Minneapolis, just for being Black in America.

CONTENT WARNING for this paragraph: graphic violence mentioned. For nine full minutes, white officer Derek Chauvin pinned George to the ground, kneeling on George’s neck as he laid on his stomach in handcuffs, helpless. George cried out for help and for his mother, repeatedly saying he could not breathe. As he slowly lost consciousness and went limp, other officers looked on and blocked a growing crowd of distraught onlookers. Derek only stopped applying his body weight to George’s neck when paramedics brought over a stretcher—four full minutes after George had stopped moving. Fire department records show that George was “unresponsive” and “pulseless” when medics arrived.

This is absolutely disgusting and horrifying. As George’s brother Philonise said: “They treated him worse than they treat animals.” And the whole incident started because a nearby store thought George may have used a counterfeit $20 bill.

George should still be alive. So should countless other Black people, whose lives have been cut short by police brutality.

We must hold the officers involved accountable, but we must also take collective action to dismantle the racist institutions that allow devastating acts of violence like this to keep happening.

So Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and I are coming together to raise $50,000 for critical racial justice work.

Please donate right now to help us reach our goal of $50,000 for Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block, two Black-led Minnesota-based groups organizing for racial justice.

My sister in service Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents Minneapolis, said this week: “Black lives matter isn’t just a chant—it’s a call for justice. It’s a call for our humanity to be recognized.”

Calling for justice, thousands of unarmed protesters gathered this week at the intersection where George was killed. Police officers in riot gear responded with force by firing tear gas and painful rubber bullets into the crowd.

What a contrast between that violence vs. the calm police response to heavily armed crowds of white people protesting lifesaving stay-at-home orders in state capitals around the country. This image shows the contrast in police response:

On the top is a photo of unarmed Minneapolis protests and on the bottom is a photo of armed protests at the Michigan Capitol Building.

We’ve seen that police CAN exercise restraint when they want to. Time and again, we’ve seen police calmly de-escalate situations where white men are charging at them with weapons. They even took Dylann Roof out for fast food on the way to the police station, after he brutally murdered nine Black people at church.

While Trump supports mainly-white protests calling to risk lives in order to reopen hair salons, he’s encouraging police and the National Guard to pepper spray civilians and shoot rubber bullets into crowds of people protesting for their lives.

This comparison of screenshots make this racism clear:

This is unacceptable. Please donate now to Black-led groups organizing to end racist, anti-Black policing.

“I got on my knees and I put up a peace sign and they tear gassed me,” said one Minneapolis protester. And in downtown LA, where people also gathered in outrage about police killings of Black people, police drove through a crowd of protesters, hospitalizing one person. Protests continued across the country last night, with some erupting into looting and property damage.

Again, to make the contrast clear: Many of last weekend’s protests about COVID-related stay-at-home restrictions involved groups of angry people carrying menacing military-grade weapons, including at least one bazooka.

When mainly-white people literally threatened the lives of police officers, police remained calm and successfully de-escalated tensions. In Michigan’s State Capitol earlier this month, anti-shutdown activists with guns pushed past police who wore regular uniforms—not riot gear—to yell at and loom above legislators in session, some of whom wore bullet-proof vests. Not one police officer pushed back or used force; instead, our state government decided to shut down the capitol.

Meanwhile, police came to Minneapolis protests—and other demonstrations against anti-Black racism across the country—ready for war. Is it any wonder those protests erupted into what look like war zones?

We must raise our voices together against injustice and anti-Black racist violence. If you can, please chip in right now to support Black-led groups organizing for racial justice.

George Floyd’s murder follows other senseless murders of Black women and men in recent weeks, including for jogging in public (Ahmaud Arbery) or simply staying at home (Breonna Taylor). Black people are being executed just for existing, with police shootings a leading cause of death for young black men—who are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than white men.

It’s not surprising when we learn more about the racist foundations of policing in this country: Many police departments began as slave patrols. The Minneapolis Police Department was first formed in the 1860s to surveil and oppress Black people and Native Americans. Lynchings haven’t stopped—the difference is that now they’re filmed so we can all see.

Data tracked by the Minneapolis police department confirms years of the city’s discriminatory policing, which has not stopped. And people in the area have experienced many local instances of anti-Black police violence and murder without police accountability, including the acquittal of Philando Castile’s killer. For years, grassroots activists and groups like Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective have been pushing for change in the region.

Until we dismantle systemic racism, these horrific executions will continue—especially because their murderers are rarely held accountable.

The four Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s murder have been fired, and we just learned that Derek Chauvin has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. I agree with George Floyd's relatives that the officers should be charged with murder.

Multiple officers involved in George Floyd's murder also had complaints of excessive force and police misconduct filed against them previously, but had not faced any discipline until this week. Instead of arresting Derek Chauvin, hundreds of police in riot gear guarded his home for days, arresting protesters for “unlawful assembly.”

When police kill Black Americans—and get away with it—it traumatizes their families and the broader Black community in deep ways. It sends the message that Black lives do not matter to the people in power.

Black people haven’t had time to heal, with never-ending violence, dehumanization, and fear. One Minneapolis protester this week said: “It could have been my son. It could have been me.”

This unbearable trauma has been stewing since our country’s founding, and now it’s joined by the current trauma of this pandemic, with Black people dying and losing their jobs at higher rates than white people. In New York City, police have used COVID-19 as an excuse to target Black and brown people with fines and arrests: issuing 81% of COVID-related enforcement summons to Black and Latinx people. New Yorkers are calling it “the new stop-and-frisk.”

And we know that even nonviolent interactions with police can end in unnecessary arrests of Black people—which can lead to people losing their jobs, their homes, and even their children while locked up without charges. That’s why we fundraised to bail out Black mothers around Mother’s Day this year, raising over $20,000 together. But heartbreakingly, many Black people don’t even survive police encounters.

Let’s come together again to uplift the people and organizations on the ground doing the critical work to heal and rebuild our communities. Please donate now to help meet our $50,000 goal to support Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block.

Let’s make this a turning point. We urgently need radical change to end racist institutions and end mass incarceration. Thank you for being part of our squad, building a better world with justice for all.

With love and solidarity,

Rashida

P.S. Here are links to learn more about Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block. And the design at the top of this email with the words “Justice for George” is from @shirien.creates on Instagram. Check out her account for more great justice-oriented designs.

P.P.S. A note about rebellions:

Here’s another fundamental difference between the protests erupting this week in response to George Floyd’s murder and last weekend’s protests in response to safety measures put in place due to the pandemic: Some are outbursts from a centuries-long legacy of state-sponsored racist terror. Others are outbursts after weeks-long policies meant to save lives in an unprecedented pandemic.

It makes you wonder: What might happen if police used the same restraint as they did just this past weekend in anti-shutdown protests, when responding to people protesting anti-Black racism? What if that happened, rather than driving past protesters in Denver while indiscriminately spraying tear gas, or injuring Minneapolis protesters while shooting projectiles and stun grenades into crowds from rooftops?

Police should de-escalate violence, not contribute to it—or instigate it, as in the case of so many senseless police murders of Black people. In fact, the increased militarization of police is directly related to our criminal legal system’s disproportionate targeting of Black people. It’s now a familiar cycle: anti-Black police violence spurs unrest, and militarized police forces resembling armies move in, using excessive force to quell the unrest about excessive force. All rooted in a devaluing of Black lives.

And now, many of the same people who are openly defying orders to stay inside and wear masks during the COVID-19 crisis are looking down on people rising up in reaction to police killings, wondering without a sense of irony why they don’t "follow the law."

Unfortunately, media narratives don’t often cover this nuance. Instead, they’ve largely followed what Martin Luther King, Jr. said decades ago: “Large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.”

For too long, people in power have used disagreements about tactics to delay justice. Let’s press onward in the fight for justice, equality, and humanity.