Former Vice President Joe Biden knows grief. When he was just barely old enough to become a Senator, he lost his wife and young daughter in a car accident leaving him to care for two little boys who had been injured both physically and emotionally.
So, he promised those boys absent their mother, that their dad would come home every night. Then, no matter how late the night, he boarded the train home to his little guys. He called Beau “my heart” and Hunter “my soul.”
More recently, he lost his heart to brain cancer. Beau fought and died. VP Biden knows pain, loss, and grief. Yet most of all he knows compassion. Tuesday, he came to the family of a man the country saw murdered by a callous policeman who stared defiantly into the camera for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
The former vice president met with George Floyd’s family for an hour. Then, the candidate for president, a man who understands pain so clearly provided George Floyd’s family a video for the funeral. He did not want to cause a distraction.
In that video address from the vice president’s own home in Delaware to the Praise Church in Houston, TX he said:
‘We can’t turn away. We must not turn away. ‘We cannot leave this moment thinking we can once again turn away from racism that stings at our very soul from systemic abuse that still plagues American life.’
Hundreds of mourners filled that Houston Church and as many more were turned away, because there was no more room. They stood in the wilting heat six feet apart.
The man who killed George Floyd was fired and charged with three counts of murder as the gentle giant’s body traveled to that city where he grew up. He was going home to be with those people once again.
That slow-motion murderer pressed his knee to his victim’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds as George Floyd begged for his life, then called for his mother, knowing he was dying. The tall man will be buried next to her in Pearland, Texas.
Biden in video told the family “you will never feel the same again.” As a country, we watched in horror as a cold man killed an innocent, and Americans will never feel the same again either. Biden continued:
‘As I have said to you privately, we know. We know you will never feel the same again. Unlike most, you must grieve in public. It is a burden. A burden that is now your purpose to change the world for the better in the name of George Floyd.’
Then, Joe Biden turned to George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter, Gianna, the little girl who sat upon a tall man’s shoulders and said “My daddy changed the world!” The former VP spoke to her in the video telling her about the generations of other black children who have had this same painful loss due to racism, asking “Why? Why is Daddy gone?” He added:
‘I know you have a lot of questions, honey. No child should have to ask questions that too many black children have had to ask for generations: “Why? Why is daddy gone?”‘
Every day and night since George Floyd’s death, for 16 days and nights all of the people have walked in peaceful marches, because they will never feel the same again. Biden has been listening to those in the black community to understand how best to combat the broken systems that let racism poison this country for when he is president.
VP Biden is not a rich man, but his wealth lies in his ability to understand people, both the grieving and those who march forward into the systemic changes this moment in history has provided. Americans of all colors, all religions, and all other measures have found themselves helpless against an invisible enemy, before this coronavirus pandemic. One that breaks across every barrier to seek death.
As the old broken systems crack and fall under the COVID-19 killer, people step over the rubble and march into a new world where everyone can toss aside those systems of racism, poverty and inequality in all forms, the crumbling infrastructures, unaffordable health care, and centuries-old education models. We will see how the police have become unfairly over-burdened with handling those with mental health issues, addiction, and homelessness. None of the old systems worked. Now, America will be able to rebuild the country and cast out the old, because we are better than that.
Biden’s video is below:
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