Political Quotes

“I am honored to follow our distinguished Judiciary Committee chairman and whip, Senator Durbin, who has fought so hard for the principles and values that are embodied in the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act, which is part of the legislation. It is, indeed, bipartisan, and, hopefully, we will pass it today. The fact is that this August marks two excruciatingly sad anniversaries. It will be 4 years since Heather Heyer was killed when a White nationalist drove his car into a crowd of peaceful protesters, and it will be 5 years since Khalid Jabara was shot and killed on his own front porch by his neighbor, an avowed and virulent racist. The temptation is to get lost in the numbers and statistics about hate crimes. Make no mistake, these statistics are horrifying, especially the surge in hate crimes directed against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The FBI reported just over 7,300 hate crimes in 2019. The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that there was an average of 198,000 hate crime victimizations in 2017. Hate crimes are vastly underreported. One of the objectives of the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act is to spur greater reporting so we know the horrifying dimensions and magnitude of this problem and we can better fashion solutions to fight them. But what is most important to remember about each of these 198,000 incidents is that they involve real people, real communities, lives torn apart, communities torn asunder.…”