At a Juneteenth rally celebrating the end of slavery, a Morristown minister told hundreds in Boonton on Friday that Black Lives Matter is a universal cause.
“We all come from Africa,” Pastor Sidney Williams Jr. of the Bethel AME Church said to the diverse crowd. “Everybody here has a black mother in their DNA. All Black Lives Matter.”
Morristown pastor George Floyd, Donald Trump and why Black Lives Matter: Video by Louise Witt for MorristownGreen.com:
Which is why everyone should be appalled by the policeman’s knee that pinned George Floyd’s neck, fatally, to the pavement in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, he said.
“We protect dogs and cats more than we protect black lives,” Williams said. “Why do you need us to tell you black lives matter? We don’t need to tell anybody our lives matter, because if you are human, human life matters.
“And if you can take another human’s life, then you are subhuman or inhuman. And so I really ask the question, if you really have a problem with black people, then you have a problem with your own humanity.”
Williams, a former Republican council candidate who once worked on Wall Street, also had strong words for President Trump.
“Republican or Democrat, it really doesn’t bother me. But what really bothers me is the man that occupies that house” — the White House — “has no respect for veterans, no respect for people of different colors, no respect for our flag, no respect for our Constitution.
“It is a disgrace to our nation, to everything we stand for.”
The event was organized by the Boonton Youth, Black Lives Matter Morristown and the Wind of the Spirit Immigrant Resource Center.
Correspondent Louise Witt contributed to this report.
Ridiculous bringing dogs and cats into this mess of yours. That is a different issue. Animals are mistreated enough so denouncing people for helping them makes you an abuser, Pastor and misinformed. I love animals and will continue to protect them, so there.
Pastor, Where is the Love of Jesus?
All lives might matter, but the lives being threatened every day are primarily black. Another way to look at it: someone’s house is on fire. The owner is frantically trying to put the fire out, and asks for help. Other people come, but only to watch the fire burn as they yell at the owner “Stop complaining, ALL houses matter.” Well, sure, no one would argue that. But the one currently on fire is in trouble and needs help.
When cops pull a white person over in the car, that person doesn’t worry they’ll end up dead by the end of the encounter for simply being white. The argument that “if you do what police say you won’t be harmed” has been disproven several times as well, thanks to advances in cell phone video technology. Slavery might have ended in the 19th century, but that leaves out well over a century of Jim Crow laws, segregation, redlining, manufacturing a prison system that disproportionately incarcerates black individuals (often for nonviolent crimes) with harsher penalties for them than their richer, white counterparts, and empowers law enforcement to kill with impunity. If you doubt any of these things, a Google search will explain the history behind each systemic problem in greater detail than there’s room for here. Racism in the northern states might not be as obvious as that in the south, but that makes its prevalence all the more insidious when you look at its history of zoning laws and racially-biased mortgage loans. It’s hard to show someone how they’re being racist when they think having black/biracial friends or family makes them immune. If those biracial children “look black”, their parents are likely giving them the “keep your head down and come home alive” talk that white children never have to experience.
I don’t expect a couple of paragraphs will change what you’ve been taught to believe since childhood, but I do hope it prompts you to look into the problem of systemic racism more deeply before lashing out at protesters. What you mistake for hatred is simply anger, because asking nicely to be treated equally for generations hasn’t changed anything.
Why is it ok to put down white people especially white men when you are saying it is wrong to do in reverse. That is HYPOCRISY!!! YOU HAVE SOME NERVE. you don’t want white people to say and do the very things you are saying and doing. There are mixed couples and families that YOU with YOUR HATE TALK will tear apart!!! This is about good and evil, love and lack of it . Not black and white. Wake up!!
How racist. ALL lives matter.