On the recordJune 15, 2015
I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding and giving me the opportunity to lend my voice to what I think is a crisis that we are experiencing. As my colleagues before me have pointed out, particularly Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, we are in the midst of an American crisis, shaking the very foundation of the Black community. The word crisis should motivate us to act now. Crisis describes a need for immediate action. Crisis calls for an immediate infusion of resources. Crisis requires a meeting of minds to find answers. If thousands of people disappeared in the prime of their lives, their friends, their families, their coworkers having no idea where they went, we would be calling that a crisis. Yet, for years, our young, Black men have disappeared from their homes, their communities, and everything that would have been their lives. Violence has taken them. Violence that we could have avoided with stronger schools to give youth the outlet that they need. Better jobs and job training to prepare these men to be supporters of strong families. Prisons have taken these men, prisons that we support through a legal system that dehumanizes men of color and enforces policies that all but ensure these men will enter an endless cycle of recidivism where more than 67 percent of them will come back into the communities with no preparation, no assistance whatsoever in becoming whole and healthy in their communities.…
