[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 101 (Monday, June 1, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2628-S2630]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                PROTESTS

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, his name was George Floyd, and 7 days 
ago he was killed on the streets of Minneapolis. He was not the first 
African American to be the victim of racism and criminal misconduct by 
the police. This has happened in our history many times, but this was 
different. This was a killing which we watched in realtime.
  In fewer than 9 minutes, a Minneapolis police officer, with his knee 
on the neck of George Floyd, took his life away. Despite Mr. Floyd's 
begging over and over again, his pleas that he couldn't breathe, even 
invoking the name of his mother, it didn't stop what happened. That 
photo is still emblazoned in my mind, as I am sure it is for all of 
those who have seen it.
  The look in that policeman's eyes, in the videotape that was being 
taken of that incident, was cold, hard, distant and unmoved by George 
Floyd's plea and the plea of those around him. What a tragic moment for 
our country. What a tragic moment for that family. What does it say 
about who we are in the United States of America that in the year 2020 
this sort of thing can happen with such frequency?
  The heartbreaking killing of George Floyd follows years of similar 
tragedies and needless loss. In 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was 
shot and killed by a vigilante as he walked home with a bag of Skittles 
that he just bought from the local 7-Eleven. His crime? Black in 
America.
  In 2014, the words ``I can't breathe'' were seared into our minds 
when we saw the video of Eric Garner struggling for his life and dying 
as a police officer held him in a choke hold. His crime? Black in 
America.
  Weeks later, Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in 
Ferguson, MO, despite being unarmed. A couple of months later, on the 
streets of Chicago, IL, Laquan McDonald was shot and killed by a police 
officer. The next month, after he was killed, Tamir Rice was shot and 
killed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun in a Cleveland 
park.
  The tragic list of Black individuals whom we have mourned and marched 
for continues to grow: Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, 
Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson, and many more, including Sandra Bland, 
another resident of Illinois whose life was taken when she drove down 
to Texas to interview for a new job. I attended her funeral ceremony. 
The loss of such a wonderful young woman is still unexplained.
  Now we come together to mourn the lives of two Black men and a Black 
woman--lives that were cut far too short in incidents of inexplicable 
and inexcusable violence: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George 
Floyd. Once again, those gut-wrenching words--``I can't breathe''--have 
us to tears.
  As activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham has pointed out, justice for 
George, Breonna, and Ahmaud would mean that they would each still be 
alive and breathing today.
  What we must now seek is accountability. The arrest of former 
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is a first step in that 
direction, but there is so much more that must follow.
  Too often, police officers have crossed the line from lawful 
protection of our communities to baseless targeting, harming, and 
killing of unarmed Americans of color. Perhaps an arrest of the officer 
will be made, but our system of justice rarely leads to real 
consequences that follow. How

[[Page S2629]]

many more names of Black men and women and children will be crying out 
in protest before America finally acknowledges the obvious?
  We cannot call ourselves a land of justice until we address those 
fundamental issues of racial injustice. That will require an honest, 
candid conversation with leaders in the law enforcement community about 
training, inherent bias, the use of force, and the consequences for 
their unjust action. It will require prosecutors in courts to commit to 
pursuing true accountability when injustice occurs, and it will require 
legislators like myself and those I serve with in the Senate and in the 
House and in State legislatures around this country to continue to undo 
the damage of a criminal justice system fraught with racial 
disparities.

  Most importantly, it will require those of us with privilege and 
power to step back and listen to Black Americans as they tell us about 
what a life affected by pervasive and systemic racism is like. If we 
truly want to reach a new day in America, impacted communities must 
lead the conversation, and allies must play an active and supporting 
role in confronting and dismantling racism.
  We know there are several steps the Federal Government can take right 
now to begin the process of moving forward. A good place to start is 
President Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
  In 2015, President Obama's Task Force released a report outlining 
crucial reforms to strengthen community policing and to restore trust 
between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Under President 
Obama's leadership, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division 
investigated civil rights abuses in multiple police departments across 
the country--Baltimore; Ferguson, MO; Cleveland; and, yes, Chicago, IL.
  Unfortunately, the current President dismantled these efforts as soon 
as he took control of the Department of Justice in 2017. In this 
heartbreaking moment of crisis, America is pleading with us for 
leadership. President Trump and Attorney General Barr could demonstrate 
that leadership by implementing the recommendations of the Task Force 
on 21st Century Policing and permitting the Civil Rights Division to do 
its job and vigorously investigate police departments accused of 
engaging in a pattern of practice of misconduct.
  We have a role to play here too. We must immediately hold hearings on 
systemic racism and police misconduct so we can discuss and pursue 
solutions, including accountability and training.
  Chairman Graham of the Senate Judiciary Committee has announced that 
the committee will hold a hearing on police misconduct. I am glad that 
he made that statement. I hope it is more than just one token hearing.
  When I chaired the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, 
Civil Rights, and Human Rights, I held several hearings on race in 
America, including my last hearing as chairman in December of 2014, on 
the state of civil and human rights in the United States. I said then, 
and I repeat it today, that it is important to recognize and say 
clearly that there is still a problem with racism in America and we 
still have so much more to do. We have got to acknowledge the obvious.
  As one sign said in the demonstration yesterday, ``All Black people 
are not criminals. All White people are not racists. All policemen are 
not bad.'' We have to find the problems and solve them, but we cannot 
ignore the obvious.
  Since the Republicans took Senate majority control on January 2015, 
the Senate Judiciary Committee rarely, if ever, addressed these issues 
of systemic racism in America. In fact, the last hearing on policing 
was almost 5 years ago.
  In November of 2015, the junior Senator from Texas held a hearing 
entitled: ``The War on Police: How the Federal Government Undermines 
State and Local Law Enforcement.'' It was a thinly veiled attack on the 
efforts of the Obama administration's Civil Rights Division to improve 
police integrity, and 4\1/2\ years after that hearing, we still have so 
much work to do.
  I am committed to joining with my colleagues to listen to civil 
rights leaders, activists, and affected communities to work with them 
to improve life in my State and across the Nation. I hope we can honor 
George, Breonna, Ahmaud, and all of the Black and Brown lives that have 
been lost in brutal acts of racial injustice. We need to do this by 
reforming the system that has permitted these atrocities to occur and 
dedicate ourselves to bringing about justice and accountability.
  It was many years ago when I was a law student in this city. The year 
was 1968. I remember it well. It was a historic year, and much of 
history was painful. I was sitting in the student library of Georgetown 
Law School, and a professor opened the door and asked that all students 
in their second and third year come out in the hallway. I went out in 
the hallway, and he said: We need your help. As you know, the city of 
Washington is ablaze with demonstrations in anger over the 
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The system of justice has 
broken down in the city. They have run out of attorneys to even stand 
with the accused defendants before the court. We are preparing to 
empower you, even as law students, to walk across the street to the DC 
court and play that role. We need you.
  I did it, nervous as could be, uncertain of what I was actually doing 
but realizing that the system of justice in this city had all but 
broken down.
  I think we have learned the hard way that to maintain order in a 
democracy, you need a consensus--a consensus on what is the common good 
and the belief that we all must stand together to make certain that it 
is protected.

  There will always be enemies and outliers, but ultimately, if we are 
to move together as a democratic nation, we have to understand and work 
together toward the common good and a common goal, and shouldn't the 
beginning of that common good and common goal be the end of racism in 
America?
  I read so much history about the Civil War and the role of another 
Illinoian, Abraham Lincoln, in bringing that war to a successful 
conclusion. The constitutional amendments that followed and the 
promises that followed as we emancipated slaves across the United 
States--those promises, sadly, were not kept. The Reconstruction, Jim 
Crow laws, and the discrimination that followed are still with us 
today.
  There was one moment--one shining moment in my political life--when I 
stood just a few feet away from a new President of the United States by 
the name of Barack Obama, an African American. I thought to myself, 
finally, finally, Durbin, maybe we have reached that turning point in 
America when it comes to race. If we can accept an African American as 
the leader of our Nation, maybe, just maybe, we are moving toward the 
day we all dreamed of.
  I am afraid he moved us forward but not far enough, and he would be 
the first to acknowledge it. We have work to do.
  It used to be a bipartisan effort when it came to making certain that 
minorities--especially African Americans--were not denied the right to 
vote. That used to be bipartisan when I first came to Congress. Now it 
has become another sad, divisive, partisan issue, and the efforts to 
restore the Voting Rights Act failed because the Republicans no longer 
joined the Democrats in that quest.
  There are so many other areas that lie ahead that we have to address 
beyond criminal justice. We have to address economic justice. We know 
from the COVID-19 pandemic that those who are minorities in this 
country--the Black and Brown--are dying at a much greater rate than 
others. There are gross disparities--racial disparities and poverty 
disparities--when it comes to healthcare in America, and the same is 
true for education and housing and so many other aspects of what being 
an American is all about. That agenda is before us.
  If we think coming to the floor and making a speech, having a 
hearing, and moving on will solve the problem, it will not. It will 
not. We have to envision, moving forward, rethinking America, and we 
have to acknowledge that the process will be far from perfect.
  Just the last two nights in the city of Chicago and across the United 
States, we have seen incidents occur that I thought I would never see 
again. They harken back to that 1968 reaction to

[[Page S2630]]

the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King--burnings, looting, 
confrontations, things that sadly look exactly like they did some 50 
years ago.
  The reality is this: In America, we are given a constitutional right 
to express our feelings, our free speech, and our free assembly. Those 
rights are important and should be valued and respected, but those 
rights to march and demonstrate, as people are doing right outside this 
building at this very moment, cannot be taken to the point where they 
have reached an extreme and become destructive. Speaking, assembling, 
exercising your constitutional right does not include looting. It 
doesn't include arson, vandalism, or violence. In fact, those actions 
detract from the underlying message that calls for positive change in 
America.
  I am glad that leaders like John Lewis, my dear friend and former 
colleague from the House of Representatives, has made that point. His 
voice on the subject is much more articulate and more convincing. He 
has reminded us that if we are to move America to the place where it 
must be, then we must do it in a nonviolent fashion within the law, not 
breaking the law.
  His name was George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American. He died in 
the streets of Minneapolis with the knee of a police officer on his 
neck for almost 9 minutes. He cannot be forgotten. And all the others I 
have mentioned must also be remembered. It is time for us and it is 
time for our generation to say: Enough.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Boozman). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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