John --

George Floyd was murdered on Monday. It is now a week later, and the three officers who let George Floyd's murder happen remain free men.

If the local authorities in Minneapolis believe that Black Lives Matter, they must arrest these officers and charge them to the full extent of the law. It is the bare minimum our broken criminal justice system can do at the present moment. And yet it still has not happened.

I feel sick and overwhelmed by the violence of the present moment. I can only listen and try to understand how much more intensely and frequently black Americans feel this way.

Our future cannot be like the present moment.
Our future cannot be built on a foundation ignorant of America’s pervasive racial disparities and injustices.
Our future cannot be built on a foundation infested with the rotten ideas that have torn our country apart time and time again: hate, racism, and white supremacy.

We - particularly white Americans - must remove this rot from American society. We must understand this rot won’t go away on its own. We must act intentionally to remove this rot.

As I've written before, there are substantive steps Congress can take towards eliminating white supremacy, such as:

1. Require the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated crimes at the federal level, rather than referring cases to states and localities.
2. Fully fund programs that conduct research in and support well-rounded, culturally relevant education.
3. Create new preconditions for federal law enforcement grants so resistant state and local governments take real action to end racially discriminatory policing and prosecution.

I support all of these steps and more. They are necessary to build a future unlike the present moment. They are necessary to make America whole.

But these steps cannot deliver justice to George Floyd's family in the present moment. Only our broken criminal justice system can start to do that. And only if the three officers who let George Floyd's murder happen are arrested and charged to the full extent of the law. Now.

Phil