Radical Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar has joined calls to defund the police, describing cops as a “cancer” that “we have to amputate.”
The far-left Minnesota congresswoman doubled-down on her commitment to “completely dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department over the weekend.
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Omar blasted the police force, describing it as “rotten to the root” in a blistering speech on Sunday.
“Not only do we need to disinvest, but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Omar told the cheering crowd during a “Defund the Police” rally.
“The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root.”
“When we dismantle it, we get rid of that and we allow for something beautiful to arise!”
Rep. Omar went on to claim that she was once called a “zoo animal” by a police officer.
She then described police officers as “cancer” that must be “amputated.”
WATCH:
“Well, we’ve had a black president, we’ve had a Congressional Black Caucus, we’ve had black mayors, we’ve had black governors, and we’ve had black city councilmembers, we’ve had black police chiefs, yet we are still getting killed, brutalized, surveilled, massley [sic] incarcerated, and we are still having conversations with our children on how to have a conversation with the people that are supposed to protect and serve them so that those people don’t in return kill them,” Omar said.
“I know what it means for a police officer to look me in the eye and call me a ‘zoo animal.’”
“So, I know that my silence contributes to violence,” Omar continued.
“I will never cosign on funding a police department that continues to brutalize us, and I will never stop saying not only do we need to disinvest [inaudible] police but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department because here’s the thing, there’s a cancer. Everybody knows what cancer is? So, when somebody gets a cancer and that cancer starts to spread throughout their body and you know the root of that cancer is the leg, people say to the family of that person, ‘We have to amputate this leg in order for that cancer not to spread and kill that person.’”
“They don’t say, ‘We’re going to continue to give medication and we’re gonna continue to try different things and we’re gonna continue to slowly die,’” Omar continued.
“We’re going to do everything that we can to cut the source of that cancer so that you can have the ability to live. So today we are saying we don’t want your damn reforms, we don’t want the slow dying of our communities to continue. What we want you to do is to cut the cancer so that it does not continue to spread throughout our bodies. The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root, and so when we dismantle it, we get rid of that cancer, and we allow for something beautiful to rise, and that reimagining allows us to figure out what public safety looks like for us.”
FULL VIDEO:
TRANSCRIPT:
I’m congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and I am very excited to be here with you all. We have been here before. We have demonstrated before. We have had calls to action before. We have seen our brothers and sisters shot in the streets, choke the life out of them, shot in their basements in their own homes before. We have seen sit-ins at capitols across this country. We have taken over city council meetings before. We have all heard the call for reform. We have seen our cities and our states and our country create investment in creating those reforms. We’ve all seen what happens when good people of good conscience say, “Let’s invest in diversity training. Maybe if we teach them that just because I am a different color and a different gender, maybe they’ll treat me kinder. Let’s try to explain our humanity and make them see us as dignified people, maybe that will stop them from killing us.”
We have also seen the calls for diversity, we have seen what happens when people say, “Well, how about we get a police chief that is a person of color? What happens if we just get a mayor that will appoint a black chief? What happens if we get a city council that is diverse? Maybe that will create equity. Maybe, maybe that will stop the police from killing black people.”
Well, I’m here to remind you all that all of that has failed because the moment you get a black chief, the moment you get a diverse city council, the moment you get the posse caucus in the Minnesota House, the moment you get the first black woman to represent you in Congress, people start talking about how we are not talking appropriately, how we need to be pacified, how our calls for action are divisive, how we need to talk about unity, how we need to bring the people together, how we need to do incremental change, how we need to just get comfortable in being oppressed for a long time. Because that’s what I hear when people tell me “Ilhan, you shouldn’t speak so loudly about racism because if racism existed you wouldn’t be in Congress today.”
Well, we’ve had a black president, we’ve had a Congressional Black Caucus, we’ve had black mayors, we’ve had black governors, and we’ve had black city councilmembers, we’ve had black police chiefs, yet we are still getting killed, brutalized, surveilled, massley [sic] incarcerated, and we are still having conversations with our children on how to have a conversation with the people that are supposed to protect and serve them so that those people don’t in return kill them. So, I am with you, I am tired. I might not have been born in the United States, I might not have inherited the trauma and the tragedy that black Americans have who come from enslaved ancestry, who have lived through lynching and Jim Crow and mass incarceration and police brutality. But what I do know is that for the last 25 years, I have lived as a black person in this country. I have lived as a mother raising black children, so I do know what it means to be black in America. I know what our young children go through because I was an adolescent interfacing with the police department here in Minneapolis. I know what it means for a police officer to look me in the eye and call me a “zoo animal.”
So, I know that my silence contributes to violence. I know my silence will contribute to complacency, and I know that none of you fought so hard to get me elected so that I can cosign on a system that continues to oppress us. I don’t care what anybody has to say, but I will never cosign on a system that is injust. I will never cosign on the social and economic neglect that we face. I will never cosign on the systematic disinvestment that our schools are faced with. I will never cosign on funding a police department that continues to brutalize us, and I will never stop saying not only do we need to disinvest [inaudible] police but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department because here’s the thing, here’s the thing, there’s a cancer – everybody knows what cancer is? So when somebody gets a cancer and that cancer starts to spread throughout their body and you know the root of that cancer is the leg, people say to the family of that person, “We have to amputate this leg in order for that cancer not to spread and kill that person.” They don’t say, “We’re going to continue to give medication and we’re gonna continue to try different things and we’re gonna continue to slowly die.” We’re going to do everything that we can to cut the source of that cancer so that you can have the ability to live.
So today, we are saying we don’t want your damn reforms, we don’t want the slow dying of our communities to continue. What we want you to do is to cut the cancer so that it does not continue to spread throughout our bodies. The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root, and so when we dismantle it, we get rid of that cancer and we allow for something beautiful to rise, and that reimagining allows us to figure out what public safety looks like for us.
It allows us to recognize where all of the investment that goes into that department should go and trying to increase public safety in our communities. It creates an opportunity for taxpayers to not continue to waste money on settlements for police brutality throughout our city. Now some people will say, “Ilhan, you know nothing about the police.” I used to work for a Minneapolis City Council member, and when I got there the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was to do ride-alongs with police officers. So I went ride-alongs with police officers throughout the city. I went ride-alongs with police officers in the Third Precinct. I went ride-alongs with these officers on the Fourth Precinct, and I went ride-alongs with these officers on the Second Precinct, and what I did learn is that, sure, as everyone knows because I have cousins that serve in the police department, that they are people, and in people there are good and bad. Right? That’s just human nature. Same for politicians – there are good ones, [and] there are bad ones. But the reality was at almost every single interaction that they would have with people, there was certain triggering that would take place. There is a certain bias that is embedded in the person that is policing about the place they are about to police and that is [inaudible] normal human who doesn’t have any of those trainings to come into a situation that is tense better than the person who is trained to interact in that environment – and so I don’t believe, I don’t believe there is more training to be done. I don’t believe there is more money to be invested in the police, I don’t believe that we can have a conversation about how to make them better anymore, and I am delighted to know that there is consensus in the Minneapolis City Council that believes that this department is inherently beyond reform.
It is interesting, it is interesting that they didn’t find themselves there when we had the encampment in front of the Fourth Precinct. It is interesting that they didn’t find themselves there when we saw the incident of Philando Castile. It is interesting that they didn’t find themselves there when we had the ultimate conviction of police officer [inaudible]. They didn’t find themselves there when all of you were in that room shutting down the budget hearing and the budget proposal of the mayor at City Hall. But they found themselves there, so we could be happy about that.
And what we need to do now is not to only keep them there, but make sure that they act on the statements that they have all made because we can all make statements. It is the actions that every single person should be watching for. You said this, now how are you going to act accordingly?
And so our work as the city of Minneapolis, and I’m looking at the young people, the seasoned people, I’m looking at the brown people, looking at the white people, looking at all of you because this call for action needs to be sustained until we see that action, and then after we see that action we have to be vigilant because one thing that you know about this country’s history is that every single progress has been met with regression. Every single progress has been met with regression. And so every policy that is won in support of progress, there are ten proposals that are won by the other side to undermine that process and that progress, and so I need all of you to recognize this, this historic moment we find ourselves in will get us serious reforms that are impactful and meaningful. But you know after everybody goes home after those wins, they will work overnight to undo and undermine every single thing we have won. So not only do we need to win, but we need to make sure we do everything that we can to build a system around it that helps sustain it. They say you should never give politicians the mic, so I think I’ve overstayed my welcome, but I love you all.
And yesterday we had a town hall for the Congressional Black Caucus and it was called, “Living while black in America,” and Ayanna Pressley, who I love, who’s my sister out of Massachusetts, ended with this, and I’ll paraphrase it because the way in which she speaks is not something I can duplicate. But what she said is that herself and her parents and their parents inherited trauma and pain and poverty and [disinvestment] and dehumanization, and so today what we are fighting for is for our children to inherit love, wealth, humanity, and dignity.
So we do this work, we do this work for love of ourselves, of our community, of our country, of this democracy that is supposed to exist, and of justice, and so we must continue to hold people accountable that want a certain system to fully function for certain people and completely have [disinterest] in that system functioning for the rest of us. So, thank you for having me, thank you for being here, and thank you for investing in us.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
So many words .! And all boring. We need to restore Common Law and the moral authority for Rule of Law needs to from the Will of we the people again .That’s the source of malcontent .That people have NO legal power to shape laws
Needs to come from the will of we the people again .The whole point of democracy is government of the people by the people for the people. Government means by rule of law is rule of law .And it should never have been taken from the people
Islam is cancer that needs to be eliminated with radiation. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2beb0477f5ce31a81e56ea99383d6729f5d2ed0032eaea3d4b315afe0133cc0c.jpg