June 1, 2020 CCPM denounces the excessive and unwarranted police force used to break up peaceful – yes, peaceful protesters in D.C. by the president earlier this evening. People were lawfully and peacefully assembled before curfew to remember and honor the life of George Floyd and to protest the police criminality that took his life just one week ago. They assembled to demand fundamental change to erase the culture and institutions of systemic racism in the U.S.A. They were exercising their First Amendment Rights. Minutes before the president announced Martial Law from the Rose Garden, these peaceful protesters were bombarded by rubber bullets, pepper spray, and tear gas. And why? So that the president could clear the area to walk across the street to stand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo op while waving the Bible in his hand as a prop. Something is seriously wrong with this country when its leader threatens Martial Law on its own citizens during peaceful protests. Maybe if he opened the Bible he would have learned that Jesus Christ would have been among those peaceful protesters.  We call on all peaceful protesters to persist and demand change in the name of George Floyd and for all Black and Brown lives lost or jailed at the hands of police brutality. Peace cannot exist without justice.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin