WASHINGTON – On this National Day of Mourning—as the family of George Floyd prepares to lay him to rest, and while millions of Americans reflect on the need for racial reconciliation and pray for an end to the violence that has ravaged the nation—Constitutional Accountability Center President Elizabeth Wydra issued the following statement:

Today, Constitutional Accountability Center joins our fellow Americans and our partners in the civil rights community in observing a National Day of Mourning. We send our sincere condolences to George Floyd’s family, and to the far too many other families that have lost loved ones to racist police violence. African Americans have suffered white supremacist violence in this country for centuries. The heartbreak and loss are fathoms deep, and the thirst for justice and accountability unquenched.

My colleagues and I at CAC stand with affected individuals, families, and communities. We have grieved these last few months as a pandemic has ravaged the nation, made worse by corrupt and ineffective leadership from the White House; we have been outraged as this public health and economic crisis disproportionately affects people of color and their deaths are met with a breathtaking indifference from our federal government. We have watched horrified as yet another African American was killed by police, and accountability and justice seemed once again elusive; we have been outraged as too much of the police response to peaceful and righteous protests has been violent and infringed on the constitutional rights of the protesters. 

The work of CAC is to fulfill the progressive promise of the Constitution. There are sweeping, majestic guarantees of equality, freedom, and justice in our national charter. But for too many these are paper promises. We rededicate ourselves to making these constitutional guarantees a meaningful reality for all in this country. People of color have had to shoulder the legal, political, economic, environmental, and educational burden of America’s national sins throughout our history, and I recognize especially that Black members of our American family are feeling exhausted, angry, hurt, and sad from having had to bear this unjust weight for far too long. It is CAC’s mission as an organization to help further bend the arc of American constitutional progress toward justice, equality, and inclusion. We may be in mourning today, but we will never stop fighting so that justice prevails everywhere, and we are all truly free. 

#

Resources:

“The Supreme Court Enabled Horrific Police Violence by Ignoring Constitutional History,” David H. Gans, Slate, June 3, 2020: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/supreme-court-enabled-george-floyd-murder-police-violence.html

##

Constitutional Accountability Center is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history. Visit CAC’s website at www.theusconstitution.org.

###