BLM Co-Founder: Officials Aren’t Standing Up for Black Lives

DANIEL CAMERON, KENTUCKY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Our reaction to the truth today says what kind of society we want to be. Do we really want the truth or do we want a truth that fits our narrative?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: What is your reaction to that, Patrisse Cullors?

PATRISSE CULLORS, CO-FOUNDER, BLACK LIVES MATTER: So deeply disappointing. It’s disappointing that an attorney general would focus on the community who is going to need to protest instead of really apologizing for the injustice of the lack of accountability. I think that what we’ve seen time and time again from elected and appointed officials is that they are not standing up for black lives. They’re not thinking about how to be courageous and bold in this moment to reshape our society. That’s what we need from elected and appointed officials. They need to be courageous and bold right now and they need to be pushing for legislation that really looks at divesting out of policing and into what I said earlier, investment into health care, investment into folks having access to jobs and housing. That’s what our communities are asking for and, instead, we received punitive measures and punishment. And that’s no way to care for human beings.

AMANPOUR: You know, your movement has spent all this time demanding reforms, whether it’s police cameras. I mean, you started, as everybody probably knows, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin and, you know, there were a lot of issues that you tried to redress and tried to get answered. Some of them, you know, have been addressed and many have not. But I wonder if you can, you know, address the issue that happened in Louisville. There was so-called reform that led to this targeting of this particular apartment. They had decided not to go into whole neighborhoods and, you know, fan out across neighborhoods but to go into what they considered to be specific locations, which is what happened with these deadly consequences. And so, I guess there are people who will say, well, without reform it’s really bad. And with reform, it can be deadly. The same happened in in Minnesota. There were meant to be reforms that had been enacted before the murder of George Floyd.

CULLORS: Same with New York before Eric Garner was killed. The chokehold was banned. Yes, those reforms, they do matter on paper. But if we have law enforcement that isn’t held accountable, if we give all of our dollars, our city dollars and our county and state dollars national dollars to law enforcement and we don’t tell them that they’re going to be held accountable, of course they’re going to continue to kill, abuse, maim our communities. This is why the call to reduce law enforcement, to reduce law enforcement in our neighborhoods and communities is so important. This is a matter of life or death.