Former US President Barack Obama on Monday said that people who were protesting deserve support and called for political solutions to address their grievances about criminal justice.
Taking to Twitter, Obama said, “The protests represent a genuine and legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system. We should condemn the few who resort to violence-not the overwhelming majority who deserve our respect and support”.
2. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable. But eventually, we have to translate those aspirations into specific laws and institutional practices.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 1, 2020
“The more specific we can make demands for criminal justice and police reform, the harder it will be for elected officials to just offer lip service to the cause and then fall back into business as usual once protests have gone away,” he added.
On Friday, Obama had expressed the “anguish” of millions of Americans over the death of a black man who was killed by police in Minnesota and said racism cannot be “normal” in the United States.
The protesters across the United States have been protesting since May 25, after 46 -years-old, George Floyd, African American man, died under the police custody in the city of Minneapolis.
Floyd was unarmed and handcuffed, continuously pleaded that he could not breathe. He was soon after declared dead at a nearby hospital.
Around 4,000 people across the United States have been arrested during the massive protests over the death of Floyd, according to ANI report.
The demonstration were reminiscent of those that followed the 2017 death of Philando Castile, who was sitting in his car after a traffic stop in a nearby suburb when an officer shot him.
Last year, in June, a young black man was killed by US marshals in Memphis, Tennessee, whose death sparked clashes with police overnight.