"Some people...think peace is the absence of noise and not the presence of justice," said Reverend William Barber II on Wednesday's episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
Protests against racial injustice and police brutality are still ongoing over a month after Minneapolis police killed 46-year-old father George Floyd. Some people have characterised these uprisings as violent and destructive, arguing that they're more about anarchy than justice. However, as three prominent Black activists told Mike Brown, this perception is far from the truth.
"When they call us 'terrorists' it's way more about their projection and has nothing to do with us and our leadership," said Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
"I cannot tell you how many times we have gone to protests and everything is great. We're chanting, we're passionate, we're rageful we're crying, we're loving on each other...[Then] The police show up and they escalate all of the energy. They start rubber bulleting, they start tazing people, they start tear-gassing people, they show up in riot gear."
Cullors further told Brown protests are a necessary and inevitable reaction to injustice, a "last resort" after years of ineffectual reforms. These uprisings are finally helping change the U.S. for the better. Besides, Barber points out, America itself was founded on an uprising — the Boston Tea Party.
"America has to be real careful with who she calls violent," said Barber. "Because when you deny health care, that's violent. 'Cause people die. When you deny living wages and 700 people die a day from poverty, that's violence."
"Racism is not a Black problem that white people need to empathize with," said author Kimberly Jones, whose passionate speech about American racism went viral last month. "It's a white problem they created that they need to fix."
