Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton on Protests and US Leadership

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Just give me your reaction to what we’re seeing on the streets and what has led to it.

DEL. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (D-DC): What has led to it seems to be is a really an unprecedented opportunity, that’s what I would call it, to actually see someone killed before your very eyes. That has enflamed the public has never before. And so, we find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic at the same time that we are seeing an unprecedented level of demonstrations because the public simply cannot understand how, for the first time, as they see the police in action, this event could go unpunished and the punishment that has come forward so far may be the best that the police and the authorities can do at this moment but it has not satisfied people who are seeing in real time the killing of a human being.

AMANPOUR: Congresswoman, you were there. You have been there. You have walked the walk and you have really been on the front lines of this movement. You know, we mentioned, obviously, what happened in 1968 and what a terrible, terrible time of division and death and tragedy it was in the United States. Did you think back then, after 1968, that we would be seeing this today 52 years later?

NORTON: Well, I use the word unprecedented advisedly. We had always hoped that our own demonstrations are peaceful often with gatherings ahead of time to indicate how we were going to make sure they were peaceful, would lead to more and more peaceful demonstrations, and that we have seen. But the fact that we now have social media evidence for the first time has taken protests to a new level. We were always talking about something that the press, usually the printed press, had told us about or even folks like CNN had told us about, but always after the fact. What do you do when you are seeing a killing in real time? And how do you make sure that you are having an effect? And that’s why we are seeing these demonstrations night after night and we are also seeing a mixture of people so that we are seeing the traditional peaceful demonstrations alongside people who are taking advantage of the situation.