Video: 1st African-American Majority Leader in Virginia History Speaks Powerfully About George Floyd

[lowkell]

https://bluevirginia.us/2020/05/video-va-house-majority-leader-charniele-herring-the-first-african-american-to-hold-that-position-in-the-states-history-speaks-powerfully-about-george-floyds-murder

*“It’s taken me a while because for the past days I have been going through a range of emotions, from crying really hard to being downright angry…”
*She paraphrased a speech by her niece at her school: “We are seemingly coming to a monthly realization that Black lives are disposable, and that our pleas for help fall on deaf ears.” According to Majority Leader Herring, “She’s exactly right, that’s what it seems to be.”
*“This is the reality of Black people in this country…When we saw an African-American man handcuffed, laid prone, with the knee of a police officer at his neck, and we heard the words we’ve heard before – ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ – and that police officer not relent, that’s where the tears begin, that’s where the anger starts.”
*“It was not snuffing out only the life of Mr. Floyd. We realize that that is symbolic of so much more. For me, I felt like he was snuffing out and suffocating the life and the promise and the vitaility of our country.”