Via NY Observer:
Mayor Bill de Blasio will join President Barack Obama and others this afternoon to discuss continued tensions between police and the communities they serve in the wake of protests in Ferguson, Mo. — and said today it’s an issue the country must face “head on.”
“I think the president is right to convene a national discussion. We have a challenge right now that we have to face head on,” Mr. de Blasio told reporters after a World AIDS Day event. “This country right now is in pain. We’ve lost so many young men of color, young men who should still be alive and with us today, and its clawing at us — it’s clawing at people of all backgrounds. There’s a sense that there’s something wrong in this country that’s going unaddressed.” […]
Mr. de Blasio ran on the promise of bettering the relationship between police and members of the community, particularly minorities who felt targeted by the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program. But tensions have run particularly high in New York following the deaths of two black men at the hands of the NYPD. Eric Garner, a Staten Island man, died when police were attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes in July. Akai Gurley was shot to death by a rookie cop last month in a Brooklyn housing project, in what police have said was an accidental discharge.
While the mayor demurred over the summer when asked whether race was a factor in the Garner incident specifically, today he said the broader problems that would be discussed at the White House were due to “centuries of racism.”
“I think the president is doing the right thing to say we have to come together right now, and we have to take responsibility for it — we know these problems are caused by not just decades, but centuries of racism, but we have to take responsibility. That’s what our generation has to resolve. We have to find a way to end this cycle,” he said.