Jesse Milan Jr., president and CEO of AIDS United, issued the following statement after police killed Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota:
“We are faced once again with a Black man dead after interacting with the police. Daunte Wright’s life mattered, and he should still be alive today. He joins a long litany of Black people killed by police.
Breonna Taylor
George Floyd
Amadou Diallo
Philando Castile
Sandra Bland
Eric Garner
Rayshard Brooks
Tamir Rice
Michelle Cusseaux
“These, and so many other Black people whose names never made the national news, should be with their friends and families today, but they cannot because police took their precious lives.
“Members of the HIV community regularly experience police brutality, negligence, indifference and malfeasance. We are your neighbors, brothers and sisters, sex workers, people who use drugs, and Black, Brown, Indigenous, Latinx, LGBTQ and undocumented people — and none of us is immune from a system that devalues our bodies, our lives, our love.
“We have to fully address white supremacy, the root cause of violence against Black people. We must root out racial injustice, racial inequities and racial biases whether they show up as a deadly interaction with police, structurally in our health care systems or within our own organizations’ policies and procedures.
“It must end. And we must work for its end now.”
