President-elect Joe Biden did not mince words about the different treatment that Black Lives Matter protesters would’ve faced had they been the ones who breached the US Capitol.
Biden held a press conference Thursday to address what transpired when armed demonstrators rushed the D.C. complex after a pro-Trump rally on Wednesday, the day that Biden’s election was to be made official by Congress. Biden says Capitol police fell far short of their duty to protect the three branches of government. He also noted that there was a “clear failure to carry out equal justice.”
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Last summer, police across the nation were captured on film using excessive force against Black Lives Matter protesters – spraying them with tear gas, beating them with batons, and detaining peaceful demonstrators with mass arrests.
However, that was not the case yesterday during the violent siege by a predominantly white mob who were allowed to depart the Capitol complex despite crashing the barricades and rampaging around the House and Senate chambers and in lawmaker’s offices.
Biden shared a text he received from his granddaughter.
“She said ‘Pop, this isn’t fair,'” Biden said.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable,” Biden said.
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Recently elected Rep. Cori Bush, the first Black woman elected to Congress from Missouri, was a Black Lives Matter organizer in Ferguson, Missouri. She was on the ground there after the police shooting death of Michael Brown and also pointed out the stark difference in the treatment of protesters.
“I’m remembering being brutalized and treated like a domestic terrorist just for protesting to keep my people alive,” she tweeted.
Lawmakers have already called for an investigation and possible firings in the Capitol police department, a 192-year-old agency with sole jurisdiction in the Capitol complex.
“I think it’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a number of people who are going to be without employment very, very soon,” Rep. Tim Ryan, who is charged with funding the Capitol Police, said Thursday, “because this is an embarrassment — both on behalf of the mob and the president, and the insurrection and the attempted coup, but also the lack of professional planning and dealing with what we knew was going to occur.”
“You can bet you’re a– that we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” the Ohio Democrat said.
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