With tensions already high amid unrest over another officer-involved killing, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is calling on her supporters to be more confrontational in the name of social justice.
“We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational,” Waters told reporters at a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, demonstration Saturday. “We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”
She was speaking amid unrest after former officer Kim Potter fired her handgun instead of her Taser, striking and ultimately killing Daunte Wright, 20, a Black man. The incident occurred just miles from where George Floyd, another Black man, died last May.
Former officer Derek Chauvin is standing trial on charges of second-degree murder from that incident, and Potter is facing second-degree manslaughter charges of her own.
“I’m going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice,” Waters added. “We’ve got to get justice in this country and we cannot allow these killings to continue.”
If Chauvin is not convicted, Waters said, she will support an escalation of unrest that has already roiled communities around the world for almost a year.
“I hope we’re going to get a verdict that will say ‘guilty, guilty, guilty,’ and if we don’t, we cannot go away,” Waters vowed.
Waters also rejected local officials’ curfews put in place in riot-hit areas.
“I don’t think anything about curfew. I don’t know what curfew means,” she said.
“Curfew means that: ‘I just want you all to stop talking; I want you to stop meeting; I want you to stop gathering.’ I don’t agree with that.”
Source: Newmax
