As the oldest and largest national Latino civil rights organization, LULAC is deeply outraged by the long and troubling history of police brutality in the United States and which recent cases have once again awakened our social consciousness. Not long ago, anger was similarly erupting around the deaths of Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, their lives ended by law enforcement. Then, a few days ago, we witnessed George Floyd killed in the custody of Minneapolis police. He did not deserve to die at the hands of officers who took an oath to protect the community.
LULAC stands united in action with Black Lives Matter. The pain and sheer injustice that Black communities experience day in and day out cannot be ignored any longer. It must stop now! At a time when there is a call to “dominate” our communities coming from the highest elected office, we pledge to support Black Lives Matter in the quest for justice. Latinos also have suffered at the hands of police abuse from Santos Rodriguez, Joe Campos Torres, to Mike Ramos who was shot and killed two weeks ago in Austin, Texas.
LULAC rises to join in steadfast solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of people across our country demanding fundamental reforms to our law enforcement system. We stand as one with this movement in strong agreement that we must change how law enforcement is carried out in America. Policy interventions are urgently needed to stop excessive use of deadly force, unwarranted physical force to subdue individuals, discriminatory patterns of arrest, selective non-enforcement of the law, the “code of silence,” lack of accountability, and brutal crowd control tactics which are all part of abusive policing.
LULAC stands with Black Lives Matter and will fight for justice, standing shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, until true social equity and Constitutionally protected equality is reached. LULAC supports and believes in peaceful protest and exercising the right to civil disobedience while adhering to the principles of non-violence. We stand united in dismantling oppression until every black man, woman, and child in America can live free without fear.