On Tuesday, at the funeral of George Floyd held in his hometown of Houston, Texas, among talk of grief there were also some ministers who took the opportunity to make political statements and slam President Trump.
Rev. William ‘Bill’ Lawson, the pastor emeritus of Wheeler Baptist Church in Houston, stated, “Obviously the first thing we have to do is to clean out the White House.” The Reverend Al Sharpton went further, saying, the White House represented “wickedness in high places.’
Lawson said:
I have seen any number of struggles against racism and they have all ended up with relatively little outcome. So the question is valid; it’s a reasonable question: Is this going to be like so many other movements, a moment of anger and rage and then back to business as usual? You could say that because the prejudiced and the bigoted are not going to change. But we can do some things to change them.
And that’s what I hope we will do. First of all, we can make sure that we don’t stop the fight, that we stay with it, because if we make sure that somebody knows that we are not going to stand for this to keep on going. Obviously the first thing we have to do is to clean out the White House. That has to come closer to us than Washington. Our states and counties and cities have to have good leadership. That means that we have to go and vote.
Sharpton added his own criticism of President Trump, according to the Daily Mail, saying:
You’re sitting there thinking about how to stop the protests rather than how to stop the brutality. You’re calling your cabinet in trying to figure out how its going to affect your vote rather than how it’s going to affect our lives. Wickedness in high places. You take rubber bullets and tear gas to clear out peaceful protesters and then take the bible and walk in front of a church and use a church as a prop. Wickedness in high places. You ain’t been walking cross that street when the church didn’t have the boards up. You weren’t putting up no Bible when Arbery was killed in Brunswick, when Taylor was killed in Louisville.
Former Vice President Joe Biden sent a video message in which he stated, accompanied by music:
To George’s family and friends: Jill and I know the deep hole in your hearts when you bury a piece of your soul deep in this Earth. As I said to you privately, we know we know you will never feel the same again …
To George’s children and grandchild: I know you miss your dad and your granddad. To Gianna, as I said to you when I saw you yesterday, you’re so brave, daddy’s looking down and he’s so proud of you … I know you have a lot of questions, honey. No child should have to ask question that too many black children have had to ask for generations – why? Why is daddy gone? …
Why in this nation do too many black Americans wake up knowing they could lose their life in the course of just living their life … Now is the time for racial justice. That’s the answer we must give to our children when they ask why. Because when there’s justice for George Floyd we will truly be on the way to racial justice in America. Then, as you said Gianna, your daddy will have changed the world.
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