During his press conference today, President Obama addressed the violence in Baltimore, claiming his political agenda would help solve some of the problems found in impoverished urban communities, such as the one where the violence occurred.
“There’s a bunch of my agenda that would make difference right now in that,” he said, calling for more funding for early education, criminal justice reform and job training.
Obama criticized members of Congress for blocking his agenda items, but encouraged Americans to do some “soul searching” during his joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this afternoon.
“I’m under no illusion that under this Congress we’re going to get massive investments in urban communities,” he said, adding that it was important to work to improve communities anyway.
He explained Americans should not “just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns,” but rather work together to tackle poverty around the nation.
“[W]hat I’ve tried to do is promote those ideas that would make a difference, but I think we all understand that politics is tough because it’s easy to ignore those problems or to treat them as a law and order issue as opposed to a broader social issue,” he said.
Obama also suggested that the media was once again overplaying the violent protests while ignoring the peaceful ones done by community organizers in the Baltimore community.
“One burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again and the thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way, I think, have been lost in the discussion,” he said.
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