Black Lives Matter (BLM) cofounder Patrisse Cullors blasted President Joe Biden in an interview Sunday, suggesting that he is failing the movement. She also pressured Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to “fund programs to remove law enforcement from traffic stops.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Cullors spoke in depth about the death of Tyre Nichols following a police brutality incident with the Memphis Police, as well as her cousin Keenan Anderson’s death this month after he was tased in a confrontation with Los Angeles, California, police.
“Every year, families, community members, organizers have said this must stop and there’s a different way to do this. And yet there has been deep cowardice from officials,” Cullors said before taking a direct swipe at Biden:
It’s truly a failure of leadership at the highest level, all the way up to our president. This movement was able to help get Joe Biden into office, and yet in his first State of the Union address, he yelled: “Fund the police.” It’s a direct affront to the movement that called for resources out of policing and into social services. Our elected officials have decided to abandon a movement that could have saved the lives of the people who have died.
Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles supporters protest outside the Unified School District headquarters calling on the board of education to defund school police on June 23, 2020, in Los Angeles, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Cullors said in the interview that after Anderson’s death, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reached out to her to offer his condolences and “asked if there’s anything he could do.”
Reflecting on Buttigieg’s question, she suggested in the interview that he could “lead a conversation” about using “federal dollars” to “fund programs to remove law enforcement from traffic stops.”
As Breitbart News noted, Cullors was vehemently opposed to former President Donald Trump in 2020 and said she would pressure Biden to advance her policy goals.
She said in a June 2020 interview with CNN, “we’re also going to continue to push and pressure vice president Joe Biden around his policies and relationship to policing and criminalization.”
In a 2020 interview with Vox, she declared that, under a Biden administration, protests and advocacy would continue.
“We are going to use protests … We’re also going to use our power, and the halls of power to make sure change happens,” Cullors said.
