Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for yielding. And I also thank, of course, my good friend and colleague, Congressman Don Payne, from across the Hudson River, who does such a tremendous job of representing the people of Newark and Essex County. It has been an honor and a privilege to watch my two colleagues during this year preside over the CBC Special Order hour, giving us, as a caucus, an opportunity to share with the American people some of our thoughts and ideas and the issues that we are working on to improve a lot of those that we represent in the African American community and all across this great, gorgeous mosaic in the United States of America. I am troubled, of course, by the events of the last few days as relates to the Laquan McDonald case out of Robin Kelly's hometown in Chicago. About a year ago, many of us from the Congressional Black Caucus were on this very House floor talking about the failure to indict in the killing of Michael Brown; and in the same week, 3 days later, the failure to indict in the strangulation of Eric Garner, who, of course, was put into an unauthorized choke hold and killed as a result of allegedly selling loose cigarettes. It, of course, highlighted the problem of African American men being killed at the hands of police officers, which is a decade-old problem that, hopefully, here in America we will find the courage one day to confront.…”