Press Release
The Killing of George Floyd and the Lack of Leadership at the Local and National Level
The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer – an ugly reminder that in 2020, black people are still treated as if they are disposable – has unleashed a torrent of anger in our cities reflecting the fractured state of our society.
People of color have endured this American state of affairs for decades, centuries. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the stark landscape of this endemic racism in jarringly disproportionate rates of death, destruction and economic ruin in black and brown communities. The protests, and indeed the violence that has accompanied some of them, are inexorable responses to unaddressed issues and conditions in our cities and across the nation – and to the hidden and blatantly racist policies that dictate access to healthcare, jobs, decent housing, quality education, and freedom from police incursion in the fabric of daily life based on race and income. They send a message to those in our nation who condone legalized looting on Wall Street and legalized murder (by the police state) and are perfectly content with long-standing structural inequities that condemn communities of color to second-class status. Let us hope this message is heard before violence overtakes us all.
If the COVID-19 pandemic made clear the inherent inequities of our healthcare system – 24,000 blacks dead out of 103,000 total deaths -- then the killing of Mr. Floyd reminded us that this nation still has not reckoned with generations of systemic racism and the seeds it has sown: indifference, greed, white male dominance and the systemic exclusion of those who do not fit into the accepted American profile.
The pandemic, this senseless death, and official responses to them have also underscored an appalling lack of leadership – both at the local and national level. It is time for these leaders to address structural inequality and improve the lives of all New Yorkers—regardless of where they live, how much they make, where they come from, or their race.
Since its establishment more than 175 years ago, the Community Service Society has had and continues to have as its mission the struggle against the consequences of inequities that result in marginalization and disaffection of significant numbers in our society. Whether it’s pointing out the failure of our health care financing system to fund public hospitals, government abandonment and disinvestment of Public Housing, lack of paid sick days and work protections for low-wage workers, a mass incarceration system that targets black and brown people and saddles them with criminal records that practically ensure they are excluded from full participation in the economic and civic life of our communities, or the consequences of an under-resourced education system, we advocate for a more equitable and inclusive New York.
To that end, we call upon our elected officials to recognize that we will see more protests unless we come together behind a strategy of sharing resources, providing the basics of health, employment and housing, and the right to fully participate in society for all of us. And at this moment, we demand that they bring those entrusted with the power to use lethal force to account when they abuse it.