Rep. Ilhan Omar called for dismantling economic and political systems that serve as a “system of oppression.”
The Minnesota Democrat said Tuesday that most conversations around police brutality and racial injustice do not go far enough in their call for change.
“We can’t stop at criminal justice reform or policing reform,” she said during an outdoor press conference. “We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system. We are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, [and] in the air we breathe.”
Omar said it was time to “guarantee homes for all” due to racial disparities in homeownership. She said that homeownership rates are nearly twice as high for White families as they are for Black families.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks to a crowd gathered for a march to defund the Minneapolis Police Department on June 6, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The march commemorated the life of George Floyd who was killed by members of the MPD on May 25. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
She also promoted the Green New Deal “because we know that environmental racism is real.”
“No one is saying that the community is not going to be kept safe. No one is saying crimes will not be investigated. No one is saying that we are not going to have a proper response when community members are in danger,” she said. “What we are saying is the current infrastructure that exists as policing in our city should not exist anymore and we can’t go about creating a different process with the same infrastructure in place.”
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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