This is the most anxious time for our city & country I can remember. Some thoughts on what we must do together & what I am committing to incl:
-Start from listening to Black ppl
-Deescalate the police
-#Repeal50A
-NYPD hiring freeze #NYCBudgetJustice
landerfornyc.com/words/2020/5/3…
-Start from listening to Black ppl
-Deescalate the police
-#Repeal50A
-NYPD hiring freeze #NYCBudgetJustice
landerfornyc.com/words/2020/5/3…
The starting place for this moment, in general, but especially for white people, is to listen as honestly as we can to Black people about the anger and pain they are feeling, and the system of white supremacy and systemic racism it reflects.
The police have to deescalate. In NYC & elsewhere, we've seen officers violently shoving people, indiscriminately spraying pepper-spray, in one case removing a man’s mask before spraying him, and even police violently driving their cars into a crowd
Mayor de Blasio & Commissioner Shea have failed to rise to the moment. The mayor’s defense of inexcusable police conduct sends a message that such conduct is acceptable. As @MaraGay wrote, the result is a lack of moral leadership, when we need it most nytimes.com/2020/05/31/opi…
Good that @NewYorkStateAG will be leading an investigation of policing of these protests. I'll be talking with my colleagues about how the @NYCCouncil will use our oversight authority too. There must be accountability for there to be any sense of the possibility of justice.
We aren’t going to dismantle systemic racism overnight, but we damn well better start making some real progress on police accountability. That includes #Repeal50A, which shields officers from accountability. gothamist.com/news/ny-police…
And #NYCBudgetJustice, because the NYPD should not be spared from budget cuts:
The many factors of systemic racism, widening inequality, growing polarization, lack of leadership, compounded with the grief and economic anxiety of the COVID crisis, which has hit communities of color the hardest, has made this is the most combustible time of our lifetimes.
It’s fair to wonder whether we are, collectively, up to the task for moving through this moment together. But I know our responsibility is to do everything possible to make it go better.
