Congressional Black Caucus

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. I want to thank my good friend from New York for his leadership this evening--it is the kind of leadership he has provided ever since he has come to the Congress--and for the critique he has just offered.

But I come to the floor this afternoon to try to convert that critique into an understanding of the big picture. Demonstrations have been going on, even though we are days away from the day when the indictment did not come down.

In a country where you haven't seen demonstrations all across the United States for some time, why have demonstrations by young people broken out all across America?

There is a message here that comes from the demonstrations and from the words of the parents of Michael Brown. His father pleaded that Michael Brown not have died in vain. The people in the streets are there to see that Michael Brown did not die in vain; that probable cause, once again, becomes color blind, to see that, when a young Black man goes into the street, he is not consistently and constantly profiled because of the color of his skin.

These demonstrations show that issues of detention and stopping of Black men, especially Black men in the streets, has been simmering below the surface until this tragedy became a way for it to find an outlet.

The provocative stops in the street--Eric Holder, a former U.S. Attorney, now the Attorney General of the United States, has been stopped in the streets of the Nation's Capitol. And I say to my good friends, this is a progressive city. I cannot imagine what it must be like across the United States.

A young Black man in St. Louis held up a poster, which is all about the big picture. It said: ``We Are All Mike Brown.''

When my son goes into the streets, he is Michael Brown. We want an America so that when he goes into the street, he is like everybody else until he does something wroBREAK IN TRANSCRIPTng and there is probable cause to show it. That does not occur in any city, in any small hamlet in the United States today, and so, yes, this great tragedy has become a vehicle to express that grievance.

There are things that can be done. The President has just come forward with a request for an appropriation for body cameras, a small amount, 260-some million dollars. Body cameras work. We have found that when police have body cameras, they protect the police as well as protecting members of the public.

So as we come to grips with the fact that there was no bill, no indictment, I hope we will not lose our focus on the big picture, that we are, in essence, sending a message to police departments all over the United States.

Even though you think you are not doing it, what we are talking about is endemic throughout the United States. People are laying down in peaceful protest. Yes, they are blocking the streets. I must say, when I was a youngster in the civil rights movement, we tried not to inconvenience people; but, look, this is a wholly different day, and they mean to draw the attention of the entire public and, yes, of police around the United States to just how much of a festering sore unwarranted stops of people of color have been.

I thank my good friend from New York for leading this Special Order. I thank the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus for leading us off tonight.

In the spirit of Michael Brown's father, who asked that his son not have died in vain, let us make sure that we support the President's request for a pilot program for providing cameras, that we send the message back home to our police departments, and that we work together to make probable cause colorblind.

I thank my good friend from New York.

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