Planned Parenthood President Expresses Grief, Outrage Over Violence Against Black Lives & Protesters Demanding Justice
For Immediate Release: May 29, 2020
Washington, DC — Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, released the following statement on the death of George Floyd and the violence against protesters in Minneapolis demanding justice for his murder.
Statement from Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president, Planned Parenthood Action Fund:
“‘A riot is the language of the unheard.’ I’ve been meditating on these words from Martin Luther King, Jr. in the last few days and as the Black community has endured tragedy after tragedy. There are a million reasons I’m heartbroken and enraged by the violence on Black lives – George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Christian Cooper. Three of the four fired police officers who senselessly killed George Floyd have yet to be arrested – at the same time, the protesters demanding justice and accountability are being jailed, attacked, and vilified, even by the President of the United States.
“White supremacy is more than lynching and white hoods — it’s in the biases people hold when they see Black people and how violently those biases can play out. It’s in the over-policing of Black bodies, upheld through racist institutions that inflict violence without punishment under the law. It is that same policing of our bodies that makes the promise of reproductive freedom unattainable for Black people in this country. If we do not have the right to bodily autonomy to live our lives — or protest the violence against our lives — without the fear of violence, we can never achieve justice, let alone reproductive freedom.
“In Minneapolis and across the country, as we continue to watch our country’s two very different, racially divided, systems of justice unfold, we must demand accountability; we must demand justice; we must demand an end to the inequity that continues to define every moment of life for Black America.”
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Planned Parenthood Action Fund is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit membership organization formed as the advocacy and political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Action Fund engages in educational, advocacy and electoral activity, including grassroots organizing, legislative advocacy, and voter education.