Brian Jones: “Thank you, Senator Durbin for this bill. Thank you for the colleagues who are on here. I was struck when Senator Kaine…”

“Thank you, Senator Durbin for this bill. Thank you for the colleagues who are on here. I was struck when Senator Kaine rose in honor of those who died in Virginia. The list goes on and on. You can go to Emmett Till. You can go to the four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, and Cynthia Wesley. You can go to those who lost their lives in a church in Charleston, SC. The thing that connects them all is not just that they died because of the color of their skin, not just because of the White supremacists who were trying to change the political dynamic in this country. It is an unbroken stream that goes back decades and generations. It goes back to the time of the great original sin of slavery, when White supremacy tried to dominate this country, and it goes back to a string of unbroken deaths that are occurring even as we speak. Hate crimes across this country have proliferated, whether it is not just White on Black or it is the Tree of Life synagogue. It is so many things that we have to stop. The interesting thing to me of what happened this week is that the day after the Presidential debates when the President of the United States refused to condemn White supremacy, the Governor of the State of Alabama, my friend Kay Ivey--Republican Governor of the State of Alabama--apologized to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that occurred 57 years ago.…”