Hollywood heavyweight George Clooney is refusing to stay silent about systemic anti-black racism built into the criminal justice system. The
Ocean’s Eleven star has penned an op-ed for The Daily Beast where he calls on all of us to first recognize anti-black racism as “our pandemic” before we can take steps toward change.“There is little doubt that George Floyd was murdered. We watched as he took his last breath at the hands of four police officers,”
he writes, comparing the current protests to similar reactions in 2014 when Eric Garner was murdered by police, and earlier in 1992 when white police officers were acquitted of the brutal beating of Rodney King, despite damning video evidence. “We hope and pray that no one else will be killed. But we also know that very little will change.”“The anger and the frustration we see playing out once again in our streets is just a reminder of how little we’ve grown as a country from our original sin of slavery,” he continues.” The fact that we aren’t actually buying and selling other human beings anymore is not a badge of honour.”[video_embed id='1969019']RELATED: Michael B. Jordan, Halsey, Jamie Foxx attend Black Lives Matter protests [/video_embed]Clooney, who previously penned
an op-ed for The New York Times on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, then points to the facts of a broken American criminal justice system that arrests, incarcerates and denies bail in disproportionately high numbers for members of the black community in comparison to white people guilty of the same crime. He calls for a change amongst law enforcement, the judicial system, policy makers, and politicians, before seemingly calling out President Donald Trump’s much-maligned tweet where he stated, "when there's looting, people get shot." In reference to leadership, Clooney says the U.S. needs fair policymakers, not "leaders that stoke hatred and violence as if the idea of shooting looters could ever be anything less than a racial dog whistle."His lasting final thought was simple and concrete: “There is only one way in this country to bring lasting change: Vote.”The Oscar-winner has been active in the political sphere for many years now, most notably in Sudan where he filmed
a documentary about Darfur, and even
funded the launch of satellites to track and surveil the war-crimes against the Sudanese people by the government. His commitment to exposing the war crimes against Darfur refugees even
led to his arrest at the Sudan embassy in Washington DC in 2012. His partner, Amal Clooney, is a British-Lebanese human rights barrister who has prosecuted war crimes in the Gaza strip and represented Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohammed Fahmy after his arrest and incarceration by Cairo authorities.[video_embed id='1968993']BEFORE YOU GO: Don Lemon calls out celebrities for "doing nothing" [/video_embed]
