Ex-US President, Barack Obama has reacted to the killing of George Floyd and resultant protests rocking the country.
This is Obama’s first live remarks on the unrest gripping dozens of U.S. cities following the murder of the black man by a white police officer nine days ago.
He directly sent a message to young African-Americans, telling them, “I want you to know that you matter, I want you to know that your lives matter, that your dreams matter.”
The Ex-President called on every mayor in the country to review the use-of-force policies by their police department in consultation with their communities.
Obama’s livestream address from his home in Washington, D.C. was part of a discussion hosted by My Brother’s Keeper, a programme the Ex-President founded in 2014 in the wake of the police shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The protests have been on and have now circulated to almost every state in the country since George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died as a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck nine days ago.
Obama added, “In some ways, as tragic as these last few weeks have been, as difficult and scary and uncertain as they’ve been, they’ve also been an incredible opportunity for people to be awakened to some of these underlying trends.
“And they offer an opportunity for us to all work together to tackle them, to take them on, to change America and make it live up to its highest ideals.”
