Bush, holding hands with first lady Michelle Obama, smiled and swayed as the song played.
Advertisement
Obama sharply criticized anyone who would paint all police as bigoted or seek violence against them.
A call for solidarity was reinforced by several speakers at the interfaith service, including former President George W. Bush, a Dallas resident, who attended with his wife, Laura.
So on Tuesday he used the words of Stevie Wonder’s song “As” to speak to the families of the officers who were killed. Spouses, children and parents of those killed sat front and center in the first rows.
“We turn on the TV or surf the Internet and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners”, Obama said at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center Tuesday, according to ABC News. “The city of Dallas shall overcome the evil from that day”.
Former President George W. Bush called for unity. “This is the bridge across our nation’s deepest divisions”. Lorne Ahrens, 48; Officer Michael Krol, 40; and Officer Patrick Zamarippa, 32, and Sgt. Michael J. Smith, 55.
Afterward, one officer sitting near the stage tried to explain the silence. “The tragedy is very fresh in our minds – too fresh for some”, said the officer, who asked not to be named out of respect for those grieving. “I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds”. “I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem”.
“Protesters, you know it, you know how risky some of the communities where these police officers serve are”, he added, admonishing activists.
Obama’s visit to Dallas suggests that the president sees an “equivalency” between what black and white America are experiencing after last week, said Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude Jr. And I know that because I know America. “And despite the fact that police conduct was the subject of the protest, despite the fact that there must have been signs or slogans or chants with which they profoundly disagreed, these men and this department did their jobs like the professionals that they were”. “And that includes our police departments”.
“Even those who dislike the phrase “Black Lives Matter”, surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family”, he said.
The task before Obama in Dallas was one of the most hard he has faced in speaking out on racial conflict and criminal justice.
A crowd in Atlanta staged a sit-in in front of the governor’s mansion late Monday. The black Army veteran portrayed his attack on the officers as payback for the fatal police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban Minneapolis.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles was one of the few places where people again took to the streets. The crowd there faulted a police commission that criticized two officers for their actions in a black woman’s death previous year but concluded that no department policies on use of force were violated.
The nation’s continuing unease and jittery nerves was evident even at the Dallas memorial service.
Obama has acknowledged the sorrow, anger and confusion over recent events in the country, and he has urged Americans to use the violence as impetus to unify and cautioned them against viewing the Dallas shooting as some microcosm of the country’s problems.
The governor’s office says the procedure was to fix injuries to his feet after receiving second and third degree burns from scalding water during a family vacation in Wyoming last week. “We have control over how we treat one another”.
Standing nearby was Quentin Draper, a pastor at the Spirit of Truth Church. “We’ve had to spend a lot of time talking to the kids, a lot of them are afraid”, he said. He thanked Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and Dallas Police Chief David Brown for their work and noted that Rawlings is white, Brown is black. “We must reject such despair”. “Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions”.
Trying to emphasize that need for unity, Obama flew to Dallas with Sen. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.
Advertisement
Bush challenged the idea that the forces pulling Americans apart are stronger than the forces pulling them together.
