Mayor Darrell Steinberg responds to death of George Floyd and ensuing protests

Good afternoon.

I’m Mayor Steinberg, the mayor of Sacramento. To all Sacramentans outraged by the needless death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as your mayor, I share your outrage. The way he died, while pleading for his life, is sickening and tells a story too often experienced by African Americans throughout our nation’s history.

Racism is real. Implicit bias is real. We have made real progress in Sacramento borne from our own painful experiences. From police officers to community leaders to caring residents, let us protest this injustice peacefully and let us continue to change, to heal and to seek justice for Mr. Floyd, his family, his community and our entire nation.

Last night’s protest in Sacramento, for the most part, and for most of the evening, was a model of strength, justice and peace. The last minutes were not.

I hope that the numerous officers hurt in last night's demonstration are recovering from their injuries. Let me be clear, there is no moral equivalence between the death, the killing, of George Floyd and what happened last night in our community. But violence of any kind is wrong and unacceptable. As I said a moment ago, the  protest was largely peaceful and strong, and I commend the organizers, along with the police officers, for keeping it so. The last moments were not acceptable and take away from the essential message that we are far from a reckoning for Mr. Floyd’s death and the never-ending fight to end racial injustice.

I’m proud of the way our community shows up for one another to stand up against injustice. I commend the Sacramento Police Officers for their tremendous restraint, especially in light of the fact officers were injured when they were struck by bricks and other large objects thrown by a few.

We will not let a few detract and derail the strength of our ability to come together for change. The trauma that people feel is real. Acknowledge it. Let us acknowledge it, let us respect it, let us demand change. Let us demand an end to systemic racism. No violence against anyone ever!

I want to repeat what I said during my 2019 State of the City address as the community was awaiting the disposition of the Stephon Clark case. The words I think were important then and I believe they are important now.

I said: ‘I hope and pray and work for peace and non-violence. We have all been working hard these last months and especially these last weeks to think and to organize and prepare for all possible outcomes. Mostly what we’ve been doing, however, is listening. Listening to the pain, to the frustration, and to the wisdom of our community. Your message is right and clear. To focus on peace without addressing justice would be a great mistake, to try to contain the community’s anger would be a worse mistake.

‘Non violence does not mean inaction. Peaceful protest is not a problem to handle, but a right to embrace. We do not need to contain, we must instead lead. The best chance we have for peace is for people to know and see that we mean to change what must change.

‘The truth of modern-day police officers is that they both put their lives at risk and they have an awesome power to take lives. As a community and as a country, we have an obligation to insist that this awesome power be tempered with wisdom, justice and humility. 

‘Where that power is exercised fairly, the officers who serve selflessly and humbly every day must be lifted up. Where they exercise that power harshly or unfairly, we must hold them and ourselves accountable.’

The officers in Minneapolis involved in the death of George Floyd clearly must be prosecuted.

Finally, I want to reflect for a moment on the enormous strain our community and our country is under, what we are all feeling. Months of isolation as a result of the coronavirus. And now dealing with not just the George Floyd case, but what happened in Georgia, what happened in Central Park, New York, all over the last couple of weeks.

The Washington Post had a headline that was both incredibly disturbing and revealing about the time we are living in. Yesterday, they said, ‘Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis.’ And I believe that’s an accurate summary of where we are at.

But I want to say it does not have to be this way. For the last months, the coronavirus has also shown us remarkable examples of selflessness, of resilience and the best of the American spirit.

We choose our path; no one chooses it for us. Let us choose the path we have always chosen in the capital city of California. We fight for equality in law, we fight for equality of opportunity, we fight for equality in word and in deed in everything that we do.

We demand and yet we still listen. We advocate with great strength but also with a gentle spirit. Dr. King said to us many decades ago, ‘A riot is the language of the unheard.’ That was not  a justification for violence by the apostle of non-violence. It was instead a message to us all decades after his passing. To know our sacred duty is to do all we can, with all we have, to ensure that he or she who is marginalized or left out must be loved, must be uplifted and must be included.

We will continue to do just that in the capital city, Sacramento, California. As we struggle these days and as we emerge from the harsh coronavirus epidemic, we will continue to strive to heal wounds, we will continue to work on our imperfections, we will continue to fight for what is right always, justice and peace, justice and peace., always. Thank you.