Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” network anchor Joy Reid addressed the scene in Minneapolis as violent protests have ramped up.
Reid pushed back against the situation being labeled as a “riot” despite the looting and burning of buildings, adding people in Minneapolis are “risking COVID” to say “stop killing us” and “acknowledge that we’re people.”
“The lack of sense that these are people — as black people right now, we feel hunted,” Reid explained. “Everybody I know, white, black, every race that I know is angry. No one I know is sleeping. People are stressed. People are afraid. But everybody black I know feels hunted. And that is not the way we’re supposed to feel in our own country. And I disagree with only one thing that was said: the word ‘riot.’ What happened in 1921 in Tulsa, when black people were massacred just for having a nice neighborhood, that was a riot. That ain’t a riot what we’re seeing right now in Minneapolis.”
“What we’re seeing right there is frustration and anger and rage and an uprising,” she continued. “It’s the same thing that we saw in Ferguson. It is the same thing that we saw in Baltimore. Because when people get good and sick of being killed for nothing in their own country and treated like sub-humans in their own country, people get mad, and people get sick of it. People are risking COVID to explain to this country that we’re fed up. Just stop killing us. This is not a — this is not a huge demand. Black Lives Matter was a minimal demand. Just acknowledge that we’re people. Now, we’re just saying, ‘Just stop killing us.’ Whether it is police or ex-police or civilians, please, just stop killing us.”
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