2020-06-03 07:00:00
Washington. With a steady hand, the 77-year-old takes off the white protective mask in front of his face. In front of a sea of stars and stripes, he looks resolutely into the camera. “I can’t breathe,” he says, repeating the phrase and then recalling that those were African American George Floyd’s last words. “They reverberate like an echo across the nation.”
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Then, at Philadelphia City Hall, the speaker creates an associative bridge between the Covid-19 pathogen that is suffocating victims and the pandemic of hate that prematurely ended the life of a black man under the knee of a white police officer. “Too often, your skin color alone becomes a life hazard.”
It is no coincidence that black people are disproportionately affected among the more than 100,000 Covid-19 deaths, the more than 40 million unemployed and the around 1000 victims of police violence. “I can’t breathe” is “what millions of Americans experience not in their final moments of life, but in their everyday lives.” It’s time to listen to it.
Commentator: Not only is Trump absent, he is adding fuel to the fire
The commentators agree. Such are the words of a leader who comforts, builds and guides the nation in the face of a historically unprecedented dual crisis. “We don’t need a presidential campaign, we need a president,” says Chris Truax in a column for the popular newspaper “USA Today”, summarizing the expectations of Biden. Donald Trump is not only absent, but pours oil on the fire. He lost the last spark of moral authority when he drove away the peaceful demonstrators for a photo with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church. “The vacuum needs to be filled.”
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Biden – Killing of George Floyd is a wake-up call for the US
“The country is crying out for leadership, leadership that can unite us,” the ex-vice president said Tuesday in his first major speech in weeks.
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This realization is also dawning on the advisory board of the designated Democratic presidential candidate, who on Tuesday (local time) with victories in the primary elections in Indiana, Rhode Island, Maryland, New Mexico, Montana, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and the District of Columbia on the 1911 delegate votes moved towards, which he needs for his official nomination. A formality, since his competitor Bernie Sanders has long since retired and supports Biden.
“A leader has to take risks,” says Sen. Chris Coons of Biden’s home state of Delaware, who sees the first black president’s deputy in the White House uniquely prepared for this moment. Coons therefore wishes to see more of Biden in public. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to Minneapolis.”
What is certain is that Biden will travel to Houston next Tuesday at the invitation of the family to attend George Floyd’s funeral. A conspicuous gesture that contrasts with the incumbent threatening to use the military against Americans peacefully demanding fundamental change.
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Young activists expect more from Biden
In the past few days, the 77-year-old candidate, who belongs to the Covid 19 risk group, has cautiously emerged from quarantine. He visited the scene of late-night protests in Wilmington, met with the congregation at the black Bethel AME Church Monday night, and addressed the nation Tuesday from Philadelphia — the same place, incidentally, where Barack Obama delivered his historic speech on race relations. But talking alone is not enough, especially for the young activists. They expect more from the man whose candidacy African Americans saved with the political miracle on Super Tuesday.
Now it is up to him to help black America in the dual crisis of the pandemic and police violence. His strategists recognize that at this moment he cannot sell himself as a “transitional” president, but as one offering fundamental reforms. Young Americans, whom Biden has not addressed sufficiently, expect no less than that.
Angela Lang, who leads a grassroots group of black activists in Milwaukee, says the ideas put forward so far are “a start” but far from enough. “He needs to be more specific.” Biden takes that to heart. “Enough” now summarizes the mood on the street on its website. And also in his speech from Philadelphia “Uncle Joe” becomes more direct. “A President of the United States must be part of the solution, not the problem,” he writes in Trump’s register. “Today, our president is part of the problem.”
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