Let me start by just ac­knowl­edg­ing… we have seen in the last sev­eral weeks, the last few months, the kinds of epic changes and events in our coun­try that are as pro­found¹ as any­thing I’ve seen in my life­time. And I’m now a lot older. I’m gonna be 59 soon.
And let me begin by ac­knowl­edg­ing that, al­though all of us have been feel­ing pain, un­cer­tainty, dis­rup­tion², some folks have been feel­ing it more than oth­ers. Most of all the pain that’s been ex­pe­ri­enced by the fam­i­lies of George and Bre­onna and Ah­maud, Tony and Sean, and too many oth­ers to men­tion, those that we thought about dur­ing that mo­ment of si­lence. To those fam­i­lies who’ve been di­rectly af­fected by tragedy, please know that Michelle and I and the na­tion grieve with you, hold you in our prayers. We’re com­mit­ted to the fight of cre­at­ing a more just na­tion in mem­ory of your sons and daugh­ters. (...)
In a lot of ways, what has hap­pened over the last sev­eral weeks is chal­lenges and struc­tural prob­lems here in the United States have been thrown into high re­lief. They are the out­comes not just of the im­me­di­ate mo­ments in time, but they’re the re­sult of a long his­tory of slav­ery and Jim Crow and red lin­ing³ and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized racism that too often have been the plague, the orig­i­nal sin of our so­ci­ety.
(...)When some­times I feel de­spair, I just see what’s hap­pen­ing with young peo­ple all across the coun­try and the tal­ent and the voice and the so­phis­ti­ca­tion that they’re dis­play­ing, and it makes me feel op­ti­mistic. It makes me feel as if this coun­try is going to get bet­ter.
Now I want to speak di­rectly to the young men and women of color in this coun­try who, as just so elo­quently de­scribed, have wit­nessed too much vi­o­lence and too much debt. too often, some of that vi­o­lence has come from folks who were sup­posed to be serv­ing and pro­tect­ing you. I want you to know that you mat­ter. I want you to know that your lives mat­ter, that your dreams mat­ter. When I go home and I look at the faces of my daugh­ters, Sasha and Malia, and I look at my nephews and nieces, I see lim­it­less po­ten­tial that de­serves to flour­ish and thrive⁴. You should be able to learn and make mis­takes and live a life of joy with­out hav­ing to worry about what’s going to hap­pen when you walk to the store or go for a jog or are dri­ving down the street or look­ing at some birds in a park.
I hope that you also feel help hope­ful, even as you may feel angry, be­cause you have the power to make things bet­ter and you have helped to make the en­tire coun­try feel as if this is some­thing that’s got to change. (...).I want to ac­knowl­edge the folks in law en­force­ment that share the goals of re-​imagining po­lice, be­cause there are folks out there who took their oath to serve your com­mu­ni­ties and your coun­tries, have a tough job, and I know you’re just as out­raged about tragedies in re­cent weeks as are many of the pro­test­ers. We’re grate­ful for the vast ma­jor­ity of you who pro­tect and serve. (...) Change is going to re­quire every­body’s par­tic­i­pa­tion.