Jul 12, 2016
At a memorial service in Dallas, Texas, President Obama gave a speech. Here are selected quotes from his speech:
Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police, and police departments that feel unfairly maligned for doing their jobs, can ever understand each other's experience.
I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I'm here to say we must reject such despair. I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we've come against impossible odds. (Applause.) I know we'll make it because of what I've experienced in my own life, what I've seen of this country and its people -- their goodness and decency --as President of the United States.
In the aftermath of the shooting, we've seen Mayor Rawlings and Chief Brown, a white man and a black man with different backgrounds, working not just to restore order and support a shaken city, a shaken department, but working together to unify a city with strength and grace and wisdom...The Dallas Police Department has been doing it the right way...These men, this department -- this is the America I know.
If we're to sustain the unity we need to get through these difficult times, if we are to honor these five outstanding officers who we've lost, then we will need to act on the truths that we know. And that's not easy. It makes us uncomfortable. But we're going to have to be honest with each other and ourselves.
We know that the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally. They are deserving of our respect and not our scorn. (Applause.) And when anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased or bigoted, we undermine those officers we depend on for our safety.
But we know -- but, America, we know that bias remains. We know it...Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.
...we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. (Applause.) We can't simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members again and again and again -- it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us.
We also know what Chief Brown has said is true: That so much of the tensions between police departments and minority communities that they serve is because we ask the police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves. (Applause.) As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. (Applause.) We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. (Applause.) We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book -- (applause) -- and then we tell the police "you're a social worker, you're the parent, you're the teacher, you're the drug counselor."
We know these things to be true. They've been true for a long time. We know it. Police, you know it. Protestors, you know it. You know how dangerous some of the communities where these police officers serve are, and you pretend as if there's no context. These things we know to be true. And if we cannot even talk about these things -- if we cannot talk honestly and openly not just in the comfort of our own circles, but with those who look different than us or bring a different perspective, then we will never break this dangerous cycle. In the end, it's not about finding policies that work; it's about forging consensus, and fighting cynicism, and finding the will to make change.
Can we do this? Can we find the character, as Americans, to open our hearts to each other? Can we see in each other a common humanity and a shared dignity, and recognize how our different experiences have shaped us?
Because with an open heart, we can learn to stand in each other's shoes and look at the world through each other's eyes...With an open heart, we can abandon the overheated rhetoric and the oversimplification that reduces whole categories of our fellow Americans not just to opponents, but to enemies...With an open heart, those protesting for change will guard against reckless language going forward, look at the model set by the five officers we mourn today, acknowledge the progress brought about by the sincere efforts of police departments like this one in Dallas, and embark on the hard but necessary work of negotiation, the pursuit of reconciliation...With an open heart, police departments will acknowledge that, just like the rest of us, they are not perfect; that insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideals.
But even those who dislike the phrase "Black Lives Matter," surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling's family.
With an open heart, we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right...We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share.
Read the entire speech here.
Jul 8, 2016
Last night, at a demonstration over the recent police shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, a lone sniper shot and killed five Dallas police officers and wounded seven other officers.
The sniper eventually took refuge in a parking garage. When negotiations with the sniper failed, police used a bomb squad robot to subdue and kill the sniper.
According to Dallas police chief David O. Brown, during negotiations the sniper said he was upset about Black Lives Matter, the recent police shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, and white people. The sniper also said he wanted to kill white people, and especially white officers.
The sniper has been identified as 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson of Mesquite, Texas, a military veteran who had served in Afghanistan.
Three other suspects are in custody related to the shootings.
Source:
McGee, Patrick; Fernandez, Manny; Bromwich, Jonah Engel; Pérez-Peña, Richard. (July 8, 2016). "Dallas Police Shooting Suspect Identified; 5 Officers Are Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-07-08.
McGee, Patrick; Fernandez, Manny; Bromwich, Jonah Engel; Pérez-Peña, Richard. (July 8, 2016). "Dallas sniper attack: 5 officers killed, suspect identified". CNN. Retrieved 2016-07-08.
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