The first night of the Democratic National Convention included a series of testimonies and speeches by voters, as well as a reserved speech focusing on racial justice.
The first hour of the convention brought repeated references to the Black Lives Matter movement, the disproportionate number of Black Americans killed each year by police, and the protests in various cities that swept the nation this summer. But neither the presumptive nominee Joe Biden nor the public figures who spoke made specific or related policy commitments to tackle various forms of racial injustice.
Biden held an online chat with social justice activist Jamira Burley, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, and activist and author Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, killed a black man in an arrest in New York in 2014. “Most cops are good, but the fact is that the bad guys need to be identified and prosecuted and out – period,” Biden said.
Moments before the meeting, Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, DC, was standing on a balcony overlooking the metropolitan area, formerly known as Lafayette Square, but renamed the Black Lives Matter Plaza by her administration when federal law clashed. protesters removed from the square to make way for a Trump photo opportunity at a nearby church this summer. Bowser’s decision to paint the words ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ on a street running between the White House and a nearby historic church, with Trump reporters directing and posing with a Bible, has inspired similar public art in other cities.
In recent weeks, however, Protestants in Washington have criticized Bowser’s opposition to one of the main demands of the protest movement: funding the city’s police department to show up to social programs and services. Bowser, who had supported billionaire former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg during the Democratic presidential primary, described the plan to re-declare police funding as unhealthy and worked actively to block the change. Bloomberg’s candidacy ran in part because of his vocal support for “stop and fresh” while mayor. A federal court has ruled that police stop black and Latino residents in a discriminatory and grossly disproportionate manner. Bloomberg rejected the policy when he launched his presidential campaign.
The apparent gap between Bowser’s conventional evening speech – describing support for a ‘re-establishment of the nation’ – and her position on funding police was not unique.
Lightfoot, whose remarks on Monday night called for increased economic opportunity for more Americans, have also drawn criticism from Protestants and other advocates of social justice in Chicago. That criticism intensified Friday when Lightfoot announced plans to form a task force responsible for tracking protesters’ social media activity for early indications of planned looting. Lightfoot also said at the same news conference that she would consider using tear gas to plunder back into that city.
Acevedo, the Houston police chief, is offering conventional viewers an upbeat acceptance of the protests and debates spreading across the country this summer. Many police officers recognized the death of George Floyd – a Black man killed by police in Minneapolis on May 25 – as a departure from American standards, he said. But Acevedo has been the subject of long-running criticism from Houston police accountability activists who claim he refused to release footage of the police body from a recent series of police shootings.
“What a mixed crew,” said Mary Frances Berry, a professor of American social thought and history at the University of Pennsylvania. ‘You should not expect the party to have someone who deviates from the party line and would say that the police bill in the Second Chamber would not do much of anything. I do not expect harsh truths to be told during a convention. It’s about packaging and marketing. They do. “
Among the most gripping speakers of racial justice were Floyd’s relatives.
“Our brother should live today,” said Philonise Floyd, George’s brother. “Breonna Taylor should live today. Eric Garner should be alive today. … Our actions will be their legacy. ”
Floyd ended his remarks by asking for a moment of silence.
