Momentum for Racial Justice Grows in Congress

PDA is proud to join the chorus of praise for Sen. Cory Booker’s introduction of legislation to establish the nation’s first-ever U.S. Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Commission. This resolution, with 11 original cosponsors, is a companion to Rep. Barbara Lee’s H.Con.Res.100, currently with 169 cosponsors in the House.

According to a news release issued by the U.S. Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Leadership Group, “The TRHT aims to properly acknowledge, memorialize, and be a catalyst for progress toward jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human value, embracing our common humanity, and permanently eliminating persistent racial inequities.”

Please help encourage members of Congress to cosponsor these resolutions by joining our Educate Congress Letter Drop Team.

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“This year has brought to bear the harsh reality that systemic racism is ever present in our political, legal, environmental, economic, health, and social institutions,” Senator Booker asserted at the introduction of the resolution. “As a nation, we must acknowledge and grapple with the systemic racism and white supremacy that have been with us since our country’s founding and continue to persist in our laws, our policies and our lives to this day.”

Sen. Booker’s words echo those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from 1967: “[W]e’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

The need for racial justice was called for as early as 1886. In a speech on the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Frederick Douglass stated, “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Help PDA support Rep. Lee’s and Sen. Booker’s groundbreaking resolutions by joining our Educate Congress Letter Drop Team and giving a donation to PDA’s continuing work toward racial justice and equity,