Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) on Saturday lashed out at critics who criticized her for her incendiary rhetoric and suggested that people are angry at black people no matter what they do.
“If we take a knee, they’re mad. If we speak up like I do, they’re mad. If we protest like Martin Luther King Jr. taught us to do, they’re mad,” Waters tweeted without specifying whom she was talking about. “What is it that they expect us to do when police keep killing us?”
If we take a knee, they’re mad. If we speak up like I do, they’re mad. If we protest like Martin Luther King Jr. taught us to do, they’re mad. What is it that they expect us to do when police keep killing us?
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) April 25, 2021
Waters’ comment came after a week during which she was in the spotlight for repeatedly making comments about the Derek Chauvin trial that many deemed inappropriate and inflammatory, including the judge who presided over the trial.
After traveling to Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in the wake of Daunte Wright’s death in an officer-involved shooting earlier this month, Waters told a crowd, “We’re looking for a guilty verdict. We’re looking for a guilty verdict. And we’re looking to see if all of this [inaudible] that took place and has been taking place after they saw what happened to George Floyd.”
“If nothing does not happen, then we know, that we’ve got to not only stay in the street, but we’ve got to fight for justice, but I am very hopeful and I hope that we’re going to get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don’t, we cannot go away,” she added. Regarding what protesters should do if they do not get the verdict that they want, Waters replied, “Well, we got to stay on the street.”
“And we’ve got to get more active. [We’ve] got to get more confrontational. [We’ve] got to make sure that they know we mean business,” she added.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) introduced a bill to formally censure Waters for her remarks, but House Democrats blocked it.
Waters also claimed after Daunte Wright’s death that doing anything as a black person is potentially dangerous. “It is our unfortunate reality that driving while Black, running while Black, walking while Black, bird watching while Black, & quite frankly – doing anything that any other person could do, but doing it while Black, too often ends in death. #DaunteWright,” Waters wrote.
It is our unfortunate reality that driving while Black, running while Black, walking while Black, bird watching while Black, & quite frankly – doing anything that any other person could do, but doing it while Black, too often ends in death. #DaunteWright
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) April 13, 2021
Wright was killed April 11 when police tried to arrest him after a traffic stop. Wright had a warrant out for his arrest for failing to appear at a court hearing regarding a misdemeanor weapons charge. When officers were trying to arrest him, he pulled away and attempted to enter his car, according to a summary of the fatal altercation from the Washington County Attorney’s Office.
Former police officer Kim Potter, who has since been formally charged with second-degree manslaughter, was arrested approximately 24 hours after the city announced she had submitted a letter of resignation.