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“It feels like open season on Black people in America, and I’m outraged.” I’ve said these words so many times before, John, and I am so sick, tired and drained from having to keep repeating these same words, time after time after time! Jacob Blake reportedly had a knife in his proximity, so he was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha police while officers from that same agency were later captured on film condoning and encouraging Kyle Rittenhouse and his vigilante cohorts to stalk around Kenosha while openly brandishing military-style assault weapons of mass destruction. How can we have this disparity in treatment between white and Black Americans? Why do we have a broken system of policing that unloads shot after shot into the back of a Black man trying to walk away, but does nothing to stop a 17-year-old white vigilante from parading around with an assault rifle after killing two people and badly wounding another? In Kenosha, the situation is helped by a racist sheriff who has said, “Some people aren’t worth saving” and that, “We need to build warehouses, to put these people into it and lock them away for the rest of their lives.” But this situation also goes far beyond Kenosha. In police departments across this nation, we see Black people being shot in the back, and treated as if their lives don’t matter. I’ve been leading the fight for real police reform even before the Ferguson murder of Michael Brown in 2014. I’ve introduced legislation to demilitarize the police and take away weapons of war from them, and cosponsored legislation that would end qualified immunity, and that would hold police officers criminally responsible for their actions. These proposals made their way into the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — which the Senate still refuses to pass. We need real change, John. And we also need to combat the radicalization and alternative-fact world being promoted by President Trump and Fox News. They tell people it’s perfectly fine to do whatever you want — that you can get away with it — and that reckless messaging inspires vigilantes like Rittenhouse to take to the street with assault rifles, ready to kill. We have the power to change this. Through voting. Through activism. Through pushing legislators and legislation. It’s not an easy struggle, but we will continue to push to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice. Thank you for being in this fight with me. In solidarity, Hank
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