Barack Obama calls for end to violent protests by quoting George Floyd's brother

Barack Obama has thrown his support behind peaceful protesters and quoted George Floyd’s brother in condemning violence that risks ‘harming the very communities the protests are intended to help’.

In an online essay, the former US President said a ‘small minority’ who had engaged in violence during protests against racism and police brutality in the US were ‘detracting from the cause’.

He later shared a video to Twitter of Terrence Floyd speaking at a prayer vigil at the site of his brother’s murder in Minneapolis on Monday, where he called for protesters to ‘do this another way…and vote’.

In a passionate speech calling for peace, Terrence said: ‘I understand you’re upset, but I doubt you’re half as upset as I am. So if I’m not over here blowing up stuff, if I’m not over here messing up my community, then what are you doing?

‘You’re doing nothing – because that’s not going to bring my brother back. It may feel good in the moment, but when you come down you’re going to wonder what you did.’

He went on: ‘My family is a peaceful family, my family is God fearing. Yes we are upset, but we are not going to take it.

‘We are not going to be repetitious. In every case of police brutality the same thing has been happening. Ya’ll protest, ya’ll destroy stuff and [the police] don’t move, because it’s not their stuff it’s our stuff, so they want us to destroy our stuff.

‘So let’s do this another way. Let’s stop thinking that our voice don’t matter and vote. Not just for the president, vote for the preliminaries, vote for everybody. Educate yourself and know who you are voting for, and that’s how we’re going to hit ’em.

‘Because there’s a lot of us. And we still gonna do this peacefully.’

In his essay, posted on Medium, Obama agreed with Terrence’s impassioned words, writing that violence was only ‘compounding the destruction of neighborhoods that are often already short on services and investment and detracting from the larger cause.’

The Democrat – who served two terms as president before Republican Donald Trump’s election – wrote the essay three days after his first comments on George Floyd’s death, which called for justice but did not mention the violent nature of some protests.

A section of protesters have set fires, smashed windows and looted stores, forcing mayors in large cities to impose nighttime curfews.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president and will face Trump in the November 3 election in the US, also called for an end to the violence.

‘Protesting such brutality is right and necessary,’ he said in a statement. ‘But burning down communities and needless destruction is not.’

Obama endorsed Biden for president in April and has said he will campaign for him in the months ahead.

In his Medium essay, Obama urged protesters not to be cynical about politics, arguing that electing new leaders on the national and local levels would bring about change.

‘Eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands,’ he said.

Trump has largely reacted to the protests by embracing the language of confrontation and war.

He declared himself the ‘president of law and order’ in a speech in the White House’s Rose Garden on Monday evening, to the sound of tear gas and rubber bullets being fired at peaceful protesters in the park outside.

In a string of polarizing tweets, he has focused on violence and vowed to deploy the US military to deal with protesters, without acknowledging the reason for the protests or the systemic racism that activists are calling for an end to.

Instead, he has repeatedly demanded a harsher crackdown on those marching in the streets following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

Floyd died after the officer pinned him to the ground and pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes, while he pleaded that he could not breathe.

The angry protests that have spread across the US have now inspired similar Black Lives Matter marches in the UK and elsewhere across Europe.

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