George Floyd’s two younger brothers appeared Monday in the virtual Democratic National Convention to call for action against racial injustice in America.
Philonise Floyd said the street protests across the country were a fitting tribute to his older brother and other Black Americans who died at the hands of police.
“People of all races, all ages, all genders, all backgrounds peacefully protesting in the name of love and unity,” he said, sitting beside his other brother, Terrence Floyd.
He later added, “It is up to us to carry on the fight for justice. Our actions will be their legacies.”
The convention for Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden leaned heavily into the Black Lives Matter protests that raged across the country and often turned violent.
Systemic racial injustice was one of the three pillars of the Democrats’ message for ousting President Trump, along with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn.
A video music-style segment of the livestreamed convention showed a montage of protest scenes as Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” played. The photographs that flashed across the screen included scenes of rioting protesters shooting fireworks at law enforcement officers in Portland, Oregon, and a crowd marching in front of Trump Plaza in New York City. Another photo showed a Black woman hugging a police officer in riot gear.
Philonise Floyd led a moment of silence to honor the Black people he said were “murdered” by police, those whose names were in the news and those whose names were not.
“We must always find ourselves in what John Lewis called ’good trouble,’ for the names we do not know, the faces we will never see, those whom we can’t mourn because their murders didn’t go viral.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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