Sheila Jackson Lee: “Allow me to add my appreciation for the continued leadership of my friend and colleague from New York and to thank the…”

“Allow me to add my appreciation for the continued leadership of my friend and colleague from New York and to thank the previous speakers. We all associate ourselves with the passion, the commitment, the determination that has been expressed. Let me, as I stand, acknowledge that I am particularly pleased to be associated with distinguished legislators. Many people in this Nation have their particular roles as pastors and as civil rights leaders. In a meeting held right before the Thanksgiving holiday, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were reminded of the giant role that they have played over the years in combining passion with legislation, hearings with pain. As early as the 1990s, we held hearings on the questions of excessive force, as well as of the issues of racial profiling along the highways of America; of the issue of excessive sentencing in the crack cocaine disparities; of the issue of dealing with the overincarceration of minorities and the overfilling of jails. Today, Mr. Speaker, I rise to plead to my colleagues. We are legislators, and we cannot legislate without the partnership of Republicans, so I stand as a Democrat and as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus that has always been cited as the conscience of America to say that we need to walk in step on the conspicuous Achilles heels of America, that is the criminal justice system.…”