Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. First, I want to thank my colleagues, Senators Booker and Harris. Thanks for your leadership and courage and the fact that have dedicated yourself to this moment.
Some would say we are fortunate; others would say we are blessed to be at this moment in this place in the roles that we currently have. Can you imagine across the United States of America how many people would like to be standing where we are standing today? Despite the frustration, we have a voice. We have an opportunity. We, as U.S. Senators, have the power, if we use it, to do something about what threatens America.
Imagine how 8 minutes 46 seconds could have such profound impact on this Nation of over 300 million people and the world, but then to realize that 8 minutes 46 seconds merely reminded us of all of the other issues, all of the other cases, all of the other George Floyds who came before.
I have just been stunned in my own home State of Illinois--which I dearly love and know fairly well--by what I have seen in the streets of towns large and small. In the city of Chicago, just this last Juneteenth weekend, there was an amazing display of unity on Black Lives Matter. The African-American ministers led it, but all the rest of us were happy to be part of it because it meant so much.
Then you go downstate Illinois to towns like our capital city, Springfield, or Jerseyville, IL, and attend Black Lives Matter rallies there that were organized by two young women, African-American high school juniors. They organized 1,500 people in Springfield for a Black Lives Matter rally.
Nykeyla Henderson and her twin sister Nykia Henderson said: Let's call together students and friends about Black Lives Matter. Fifteen hundred people showed up. No windows were broken, no looting, no screaming, no shouting, no cursing. It was a textbook display of constitutional authority that each of us as a citizen has, and they used it so well. I salute them even to this day.
Then, to go down to Jerseyville, a small rural community that I have represented over the years--which may or may not have a minority population at all--and to have, from 20 miles away, a high school junior, a young African-American woman whose name is Lay'lahny Davis, who did exactly the same thing: She called together hundreds of people--in this case, some 350 on the courthouse lawn in Jerseyville-- to celebrate Black Lives Matter.
I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen it reach this level of commitment. Trust me, these young women were doing this, knowing that some of the people standing on the perimeter were not their friends, but they had the courage to be there because they believed in what they were doing.
Do we have the courage at this moment to speak up for real change? How many times in the history of this country can Senators come to the floor and say that it is within our grasp? We can make America better, and we can perfect this great Nation to even be greater with courage.
What I hear from my colleagues--Senators Harris and Booker--I could not agree with more. I am going to vote against this motion to proceed tomorrow. I believe, as they do, that we as a Senate can do better. We can do better in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which throughout generations has been the place to go, the forum to visit, the last stop, if you will, on the most important issues of our day--the Senate Judiciary Committee--time and again.
I have been blessed to serve there for over two decades, and I look back on the history of that body before I arrived, and I think to myself: Durbin, you are a lucky man to be on the Senate Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate, particularly at this moment. This is not only our issue; this is our moment in the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the floor of the U.S. Senate. That is why Senator McConnell's tactic is so empty and so obvious.
We understand how the Senate works. If you have been here 5 minutes, you know. He is the majority leader. He calls the shots. He decides what is coming to the floor, which amendments will be offered, which will not be offered, which bills will move forward, and which bills will stop. It is his power to do it. It is a very powerful position.
Instead of saying to us: Start in the Senate Judiciary Committee, find a bipartisan measure to bring to the floor, and then let's work together to have meaningful amendments but to have it, in fact, enacted--instead of that, he said: Take our bill or leave it. If you don't want to vote for the Republican bill on this subject, go home and defend your vote. I am prepared to and I think my colleagues are too.
Listen to what the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund said about this bill today. This organization is an incredible organization, and if you don't know much about it, read ``Devil in the Grove,'' a story of Thurgood Marshall in the late 1940s and 1950s, risking his life defending African Americans who were facing criminal charges across the United States.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said: ``In this moment, we cannot support legislation that does not embody a strong accountability framework for police officers and other law enforcement who engage in misconduct as well as needed reforms to policing practices.''
The group wrote in a letter, a copy of which was sent to Members of the Senate, and they went on to say: ``We urge you to vote no on the motion to proceed with consideration of the JUSTICE Act''--which is the Republican bill--``and instead advance reforms that will hold law enforcement accountable and offer more transparency of policing practices such as those embodied in S. 3912, the Justice in Policing Act of 2020''--a bill which I am honored to cosponsor with my friends, Senators Booker and Harris.
This morning I sat down and decided to read in detail the analysis of these two bills. It is night and day in terms of the direction they take. Something as fundamental as choke holds--does America know what a choke hold is? We saw it and will never forget it. We saw that knee on George Floyd's neck, and we watched the minutes pass by and his life ebb away. Can we be anything less than resolute on the issue of choke holds? Our bill is. It bans them. It bans them. The restriction of blood or oxygen or the carotid artery--we are specific; we are specific. Sadly, the Republican bill is not.
We also defined ``deadly force'' and what is less than ``lethal force.'' We specifically defined it. What does the Republican bill do? It calls on the Attorney General of the United States to develop a policy--to develop a policy--Attorney General William Barr.
On no-knock--I thank Senator Harris for raising that--we have direct legal limits on the use of no-knock, which was, in fact, the procedure followed that led to the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY. What does the Republican bill have? A reporting requirement--a reporting requirement.
Body cameras? We require them. We put penalties in the law for those who don't use them. We also require that they be on vehicles, law enforcement vehicles. The Republican bill does not require them. It offers grants to police departments that want to buy them and then asks from those departments ``assurances'' that they are using them.
On the misconduct registry, we establish public access to the misconduct registry when it comes to police misconduct. But there is no public access in the Republican bill.
Yes, it is true, as was noted earlier by the Senator from Texas, there is commonality on issues like anti-lynching--thank goodness--a mere century after we started debating it in the U.S. Senate. We have reached that point, and I am glad we have.
When it comes to training, data, and demographics, there are many areas of commonality, but there are specific areas that this bill--the one we have introduced--includes that are not included in the Republican bill: Criminal liability under the Civil Rights Act--we changed the standard to make it truly an attainable standard on the Democratic bill; qualified immunity; civil rights investigations; the power of subpoena, which we give to the Department of Justice; the use-of-force investigation; grants for independent investigation; and--this is a measure I have worked on for a while and am so glad it is included here--banning racial profiling once and for all.
I want to salute a former colleague from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold. He was one of the earliest on this whole issue of profiling, a courageous position on his part at that moment in history. Finally, we include it in our bill.
It is not included in the Republican bill. Instead, what they offer are commissions, data collection, and a couple of other criminal offenses, each of which is worthy of consideration but should not be enough to divert us from our goal.
I am going to conclude by saying this. I feel blessed to be here in the U.S. Senate at this moment in history. I feel fortunate to have a chance, with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to change the history of this country in the right direction. My goodness, it is so long overdue. After all of the 400 years of slavery, when it first came to our shore, and the greed and racism that fed it as that insidious original sin of our country, now is our chance to do something in our generation to make a difference for those future generations that march in the street and look to us for real change.
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