Obama says US protests offer chance to change America

Barack Obama has delivered a message of hope to black Americans amid George Floyd protests against police brutality and told young people of color “their lives matter”, in his first on-camera comments since the demonstrations have begun.

Drawing a stark contrast to Donald Trump’s message, he called for urgent police reform and said he believed only a “tiny” percentage of protesters had acted violently.

“I want you to know that you matter, I want you to know that your lives matter, that your dreams matter,” Mr. Obama said in remarks streamed on YouTube, which drew an online viewership of roughly half a million people.

“When I go home and I look at the faces of my daughters, Sasha and Malia, and I look at my nephews and nieces, I see the limitless potential that deserves to flourish and thrive.”

Mr. Obama expressed optimism that the mass gatherings of people on the streets of the largest cities in the US over the last week would help lead to systemic changes in local law enforcement that many Americans feel oppresses people of color.

“As tragic as these past few weeks have been, as difficult and scary and uncertain as they’ve been, they’ve also been an incredible opportunity for people to be awakened to some of these underlying trends,

“They offer an opportunity for us to all work together to tackle them, to take them on, to change America and make it live up to its highest ideals,” the 44th president said.

This comes after Donald Trump called for the National Guard and military to quash the riots that erupted after Floyd was killed after a police officer knelt on his neck and back for nine minutes, suffocating him.

Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, and the other three officers have been charged as accomplices.

Mr. Obama also urged US mayors to take action at the local level to heal relations between police departments and black communities.

“The reform has to take place in more than 19,000 American municipalities, more than 18,000 local enforcement jurisdictions. And so as activists and everyday citizens raise their voices, we need to be clear about where change is gonna happen and how we can bring about that change,” Mr. Obama said.

Mayors and county commissioners are mostly responsible for appointing American police chiefs and negotiating agreements with police unions that set law enforcement policies.

Trump meanwhile has said he wants to send in troops even if mayors and governors objected, an action that could run afoul of guardrails against the executive branch sending active-duty military units to uphold civil laws on US soil.

The president has said governors need to “dominate” the streets with a strong law enforcement presence of police officers and National Guardsmen, and on Monday, he called governors “weak” for their responses to the demonstrations.

While many people have compared the mass demonstrations against police brutality and America’s long history of institutional racial injustice in recent days to the peaceful protests of the 1960s, Mr. Obama highlighted what he said was one profound difference: the diversity of the demonstrators.

There has been “a far more representative cross-section of America out on the streets peacefully protesting” the murder of Mr. Floyd and other people of color by police, Mr. Obama said.

“That didn’t exist back in the 1960s, that kind of broad coalition,” he said.