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[Page H2426]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LET'S MAKE OUR GRANDCHILDREN PROUD
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
Illinois (Ms. Underwood) for 5 minutes.
Ms. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the George
Floyd Justice in Policing Act and to call upon my colleagues to cast a
vote today that will make their grandchildren proud.
Our Nation is facing a critical moment of reckoning. We consider
hundreds of important bills in this Chamber every year, but it is not
every day that tens of thousands of Americans take to the streets in
the middle of a deadly pandemic to demand our attention, and so I want
you to pay attention.
We are here today to vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing
Act, but not just because one police officer pressed his knee into a
handcuffed Black man's neck for over 8 minutes. We are here to vote on
this bill because, during those 8 minutes, three other officers stood
by and because the man who killed George Floyd had 18 prior complaints
against him, and yet he was still allowed to wear a badge that should
signify a community's trust.
We are here today because Black lives matter. We are here because
Rayshard Brooks and Tony McDade and Breonna Taylor and Stephon Clark
and Deborah Danner and Philando Castile and Natasha McKenna and Tamir
Rice and Laquan McDonald and Eric Garner and Aiyana Stanley-Jones and
so many others are not here--because their lives matter.
We are here because police kill 1,000 Americans every year, which
indicates a system so profoundly broken that it cannot be fixed by
simply tinkering around the edges. We are going to pass this bill today
to create stronger systems of transparency and accountability in
policing across this country.
But just as our problems with policing run deeper than the actions of
a few officers in Minneapolis, the fractures in our country demand more
from us than police reform. It is not police reform alone that has
brought people out into the streets in the middle of a pandemic that
disproportionately kills people of color. What is called for in this
moment is the courageous and comprehensive reckoning with racism in
America past, present, and future. It is Congress' job to deliver
policy that answers the call for this transformation.
I am the first person of color that Illinois' 14th District has sent
to D.C. to serve them in this Chamber. I cofounded the Black Maternal
Health Caucus and recently introduced a package of Black maternal
health bills because, here in the United States where we spend more
money on healthcare than any other country in the world, the risk of a
pregnancy-related death for Black women is three to four times higher
than for White women. These women's deaths are preventable, and their
lives matter.
We need to ban chokeholds and end no-knock warrants for drug charges,
and I am proud that this bill does just that. But after we do, Black
households will still own one-tenth of the wealth of White households.
We must reform qualified immunity, and when we do, this pandemic will
still take the lives and our jobs at staggering rates.
Let's pass this bill, and then let's keep going because there is much
more work to be done to meaningfully address the many inequalities in
health, education, economic status, justice, and safety that Black
people in this country have faced for centuries.
At this pivotal moment in our Nation's effort to confront its own
history, I urge my colleagues to make choices that rise to the gravity
of the situation and our responsibility to the American people. It is
long past time to bend this arc towards justice in policing and beyond.
____________________
