Yohuru Williams, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative, spoke to Angela Davis of MPR News about our politically polarized society in the aftermath of fatal shooting of the Minnesota Democratic House Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and the shooting and wounding of Democratic Minnesota Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette.
"We now are living in a moment when the expectation around political violence and the potential political violence is much more present in our society as a whole," Williams said.
From the segment:
"The last five years in particular have been very tough for Americans if we go back to the pandemic and kind of moving into that moment where there was a great deal of uncertainty around COVID-19 followed by the racial reckoning that came with the murder of George Floyd and then the ... January 6th violent insurrection at the U.S. capitol and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last July. So, there does seem or feel like there's one thing after the next and then here in Minnesota it feels like we're Ground Zero.
"This has always been normal at least in terms of how if we were to look at this from the perspective of African Americans; how they had to think about politics. ... As we get ready to commemorate Juneteenth this week and people look at that as an emancipatory moment (but) you still needed a 15th amendment and then various pieces of legislation to ensure the safety of Black people at the polls. So political violence in that sense for African Americans has been pretty common on the way that we think about it."
