Black Lives Matter.

We mourn George Floyd, and we stand in anger and despair alongside protesters who are rising up all over the world against racial injustice, police violence, and mass incarceration. 

The shocking and disturbing visual of George Floyd being suffocated to death by police shocks the conscience of all of us. While George Floyd is the most recent member of the black community to be tragically killed by the destructiveness of racism and police brutality, we know all too well that he is only one of many black men and women to have their life unjustly taken away by police.

Race-based discrimination by police, employers, landlords, banks, and businesses is illegal.  But African Americans continue to disproportionately bear the everyday traumas of poverty, imprisonment, police violence, and homelessness. The COVID-19 pandemic and its devastation on Black communities through the U.S. have starkly highlighted the persistence of racialized inequalities.

As Uber and Lyft drivers, we are one of the largest Black workforces and we are majority people of color and immigrants. Mr. Floyd could have been our brother. Many of us have also experienced violence and harassment at the hands of the police and ICE.  As labor organizers and unionists, we organize not just for fair wages, but against racism and structural oppression in any form.  These injustices are closely interwoven.

Just as we will never forget the all too recent murders of Freddie Gray, Sam Dubose, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Jamar Clark, William Chapman, Jeremy McDole, Walter Scott, Eric Harris, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Michael Brown, Delrawn Small, David McAtee, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor, we will never, ever forget collectively bearing witness to the police strangling George Floyd to death.  We are outraged, and we know that this long and righteous fight against anti-Black racism and violence is our fight too.

As the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  

We fight for justice to achieve peace and well-being for all.