WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama threw his support behind the efforts of peaceful protesters demanding police reforms during his first on-camera remarks since a wave of protests over the killing of George Floyd convulsed the country and upended the 2020 election.  (EXACTLY what they were designed to do.)

Mr. Obama, offering a strikingly more upbeat assessment of the protesters than President Trump and White House officials, said he believed only a “tiny” percentage had acted violently.

“For those who have been talking about protest, just remember that this country was founded on protest — it is called the American Revolution,” Mr. Obama said from his home in Washington. He made the comments during an online round-table event with his former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and activists from Minneapolis sponsored by My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a nonprofit group Mr. Obama founded.

“Every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals have been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable,” said Mr. Obama, who adopted a conciliatory tone that contrasted sharply with Mr. Trump’s tweets and public remarks. “And we should all be thankful for folks who are willing, in a peaceful, disciplined way, to be out there making a difference.”  

 

Mr. Obama called on every mayor in the United States to review use-of-force policies and to aggressively pursue an eight-point slate of police reforms that include mandatory de-escalation of conflicts, a ban on shooting at moving vehicles, timely reporting of violent incidents, and prohibitions on some forms of restraint used by the police.

“Chokeholds and strangleholds, that’s not what we do,” Mr. Obama said as he sat, tieless in blue shirt sleeves, in front of a bookcase.

He said officials in New York City and Chicago had already agreed to adopt the measures. Other localities, including Atlanta, quickly followed suit.

Mr. Obama also said that the “vast majority” of police officers, in his view, were not violent, and predicted many would ultimately support reforms despite the opposition of some unions.

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“In a lot of ways, what has happened in the last several weeks is that challenges and structural problems here in the United States have been thrown into high relief,” he said. “They are the outcome of not just an immediate moment in time, but as the result of a long host of things — slavery, (there has not been slavery in this nation in well over 200 years.  Seriously!  How are they able to still make this an issue?) Jim Crow (Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s.) , redlining (redlining was outlawed 50 years ago.  Sadly it does take time for change to flow. Unfair banking and insurance policies do not only affect blacks.  Low income families and individuals of every race are affected. Change needs to come in banking and insurance across the board. Surely though there are more positive remedies available here in the US than anywhere else.) and institutional racism. (all of our institutions have been corrupted and need to be swept clean. Truly, the issues are more related to money and politics than race.  Powers that be want chaos, corruption and violence.)”

With the exception of his support for protesters, Mr. Obama confined his remarks to the issues of policing and racial disparities in health care during the coronavirus pandemic that have led to higher rates of infection and death in nonwhite communities.

Mr. Obama, as he often does, tried to avoid a one-on-one battle with his successor, a fight he thinks will energize the president’s conservative base and overshadow his friend Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democrats’ presumptive nominee.

Mr. Obama did not directly address Mr. Trump’s bellicose comments or the president’s demand that the authorities “dominate” protesters, although people close to the former president said he was outraged by the use of chemical spray on protesters before Mr. Trump walked to a fire-damaged church near the White House and brandished a Bible.  (I would not be surprised to discover that Obama was somehow behind that staged BS.)

Instead, Mr. Obama expressed optimism that the reform effort could transcend political divisions. He said that he was heartened by polls showing broad support for their grievances, and that this made the current situation more heartening than the protests in the late 1960s.

Mr. Obama’s remarks tracked closely with two essays he posted online over the last week in which he implored young protesters to channel their rage into political action by turning out for Mr. Biden in November and to embrace local reforms to hold police officers accountable for abuses of power.

“We should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it,” he wrote in a post on Medium on Monday.  (Gee, when Obama was in office he filled Washington, DC and much of the country with MUSLIMS.  I wonder if these folks think things would be better under Muslim RULE?)

In recent appearances, Mr. Obama has become more forceful in his criticism of the White House, hammering Mr. Trump’s actions without invoking his successor’s name. Mr. Obama rebuked the current administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as “chaotic” and questioned Mr. Trump’s commitment to the “rule of law” in a call with former members of his White House team last month. (Since he lost the election, Obama has been doing everything he can to undermine and oppose the present administration.  Much of what he has been doing is in my opinion TREASONOUS!  At the very least it is totally disrespectful and unAmerican.  We Americans have always lived with election results whether we liked them or not, knowing that in four years we have an opportunity to make a change.  We respect the OFFICE OF PRESIDENT, even if we don’t like the person holding it.  Every elected president has the right expect the cooperation and support of his constituants.  Otherwise, we disrespect the election system as well as the President. Obama has been behaving like a spoiled child that did not get his way. Most of what he does to undermine our Nation and our President he does OCCULTLY, out of the public eye. That way he feels he has more freedom to behave in ways that would expose his true nature if subject to public scrutiny.)

For all his outward calm, Mr. Obama’s passions are running high, and the former president is finding it harder to stay on script, friends said. Over the last few days, he has been working the phones with close associates, including Mr. Holder, and strategizing about the best way to address the issues without inflaming the crisis.  (he has been doing this all along. Who does he think he is fooling?)

On Tuesday, a Minneapolis radio station reported that Secret Service officials were making preliminary preparations for a high-level visitor, perhaps Mr. Obama. But people close to the former president said he had no intention of traveling there this week — although they did not rule out Mr. Obama’s participation in related events in the future.

Shortly before Mr. Obama spoke on Wednesday, former President Jimmy Carter issued a statement calling for peaceful protest and systemic change. “As a white male of the South, I know all too well the impact of segregation and injustice to African-Americans,” the 95-year-old former president wrote. “We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this.”

Those comments came a day after another former president also presented an alternative vision of the protests to Mr. Trump. In a lengthy statement, former President George W. Bush expressed solidarity with the demonstrators in the streets  (well that does not come as a surprise, we know that Bush does not care about America.) and, without naming the incumbent president, warned against trying to suppress the protests. (Is that a threat?? Just what was the warning?)

“It is a strength when protesters, protected by responsible law enforcement, march for a better future,” Mr. Bush said on Tuesday. “This tragedy — in a long series of similar tragedies — raises a long overdue question: How do we end systemic racism in our society? The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving.”

Mr. Bush, the only living Republican former president — and one who refused to vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 — made no direct reference to the current president. But Mr. Bush spoke after Mr. Trump’s photo op havoc, and the former president’s comments read like a rebuke.

“Those who set out to silence those voices,” Mr. Bush said, “do not understand the meaning of America — or how it becomes a better place.”  (Well, if our government was not so corrupt we could bring about change through elections.  But, the elite families that control everything, like the Bushes, make it impossible for our system to work as it should.)

Mr. Obama struck a similar tone Wednesday, saying the overall message of the protests was simple, admirable and unifying:  “See me, I’m human,” he said.

(I have not seen any unifying aspect to these protests whatsoever.  I have seen a lot of destruction, vandalism, jobs lost, fear, anger, and whites being intimidated and made to feel less than human.  I am sure that to black extremists that was progress.  Everyone is focusing on the police brutality issue as if it was merely a racial problem.  The police brutality issue is much, much deeper.  It is orchestrated by the elite who want chaos and anarchy.  They have been hiring police with a bent toward violence, and firing or chasing off the good police, they have been training our local police in military tactics and providing military equipment, they have been conditioning our police to see the people as a threat, as animals and to treat them as such.  People of all races are being mistreated, falsely imprisoned and abused.  Only the black have the organization and the means to make their cases so public.)

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