During Saturday’s “AM Joy” on MSNBC, North Carolina NAACP President Rev. William Barber asked following House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise’s (R-LA) shooting at baseball practice of Republican members of Congress if the GOP would work to change their policies regarding the Affordable Care Act, LGBT rights, Voting Rights Act and gun control.
Partial transcript as follows:
Will one or two days of changes in personality mean a fundamental change in public policy? That’s the moral question. I’ve been thinking about this, Joy. All of those that were injured needed health care. So now will they go back to work and say every American deserves health care, deserve what we received, and we will preserve the Affordable Care Act and move to universal health care, make sure pre-existing conditions are protected?
Since they could have died, will they repent of efforts to take money from medicaid that will help poor people and disabled and sick people, many of whom would die without that? A black man from my alma mater saved their lives. Will they go back to work and restore the Voting Rights Act and stop systemic racism against black people that’s happening through voter suppression and racialized redistricting?
A lesbian black woman saved them. Will they go back to work and no longer promote laws that attack the human rights of LGBT communities? They were shot by guns allowed to be carried openly. Will they go back and challenge laws that allow people to get guns easily so they can vote? They were shot by a white, middle-aged man for political reasons. Will they change the practice of profiling terrorism as a fear of Muslims and violence that’s mainly rooted in the urban black areas? Tone is fine, but if the policies are terrible, we don’t have civility. They were saved by good police, will they therefore challenge bad police like the guy in the [Philando] Castile case?
These are the serious moral questions that have to be answered more than just one or two days of shaking hands and playing a game because this is really not a game.
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