Solidarity Statement of the Latino and Latina Roundtable Board on the Unjust Killing of George Floyd.
The Latino and Latina Roundtable stands in solidarity with all those who are outraged with the brutal murder of George Floyd and the many others in our communities who have unjustly lost their lives to police brutality.
We stand with Black Lives Matter and our African American communities in our common fight for equality and multi-racial solidarity against systemic racism and white supremacy. We have a common struggle in opposing the school to prison pipeline, unjust detention centers, voter suppression, and acts of genocide that are seeking to keep our communities from using their growing political power. We stand against the normalization of police brutality, violence, and the use of the military by a President of the United States who, rather than coming out against the conditions which have created the mass of protests throughout the country, insists on promoting more violence and division. The disproportionate numbers from our Black and Latino communities who have died from COVID-19 has further exposed the economic and racial inequalities that have historically existed in our communities. In this context, the responses to the killing of Floyd have not just been about his unjust murder but are the result of years of racial and economic disparities. As Darnell Hunt, Dean of Social Sciences at UCLA proposes from his years of research: “The George Floyd case was not the cause … the police killings are the symptoms … the underlying cause is white supremacy, racism, and things the U. S. has not fundamentally dealt with.”
In this light, we stand against the divisions being created by this administration in scapegoating everyone from our Asian American communities to undocumented immigrants and refugees for his failures. We commit ourselves to build multi-racial unity and to turn around the sources of these disparities around through advancing transformative policies that are in the interests of providing a quality of life for all and not just profit for a few.
We stand with the protestors who are calling to turn these conditions around and who are committed to remember the spirit of Floyd by fighting for justice, not only for his family, but for future generations. We stand with Darnella Frazier, the 17-year old who courageously documented the murder of George Floyd. We stand with the families and communities who have faced the loss of life of family members and friends. And we commit to join in helping to build a nation where Black Lives Matter.
In Solidarity,
Jose Calderon, President
On behalf of the Board of the Latino and Latina Roundtable of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley