No President Will ‘Quiet Our Voice,’ Biden Says in Philadelphia Speech

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. George Floyd’s last words, but they didn’t die with him. They’re still being heard, echoing all across this nation. They speak to a nation where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk. They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to virus, and 40 million have filed for unemployment, with a disproportionate number of those deaths and job losses concentrated in black and brown communities. And they speak to a nation where every day, millions of people, millions, not at the moment of losing their life, but in the course of living their life are saying to themselves, “I can’t breathe.” We’re not going to allow any president to quiet our voice. We won’t let those who see this as an opportunity to sow chaos, throw up a smokescreen to distract us from the very real, legitimate grievances at the heart of these protests. We can’t, we can’t leave this moment, can’t leave this moment thinking that we can once again turn away and do nothing.