Nina Turner, who served as national co-chairwoman for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, said Thursday that the shooting death of 25-year-old black jogger Ahmaud Arbery was a scenario black Americans have become “numb to” and “is par for the course.”
“Black people always have to prove” their innocence, Turner said in a Hill.TV interview Thursday, saying “if there was not a video, his mother [would have been] told that he was involved in a robbery. Our very birth and existence in this country makes us suspect.”
“As long as we continue not to address this, and until some video comes out to shock us again, we just continue to forget … we’re becoming numb to this kind of stuff. For the black community, this is par for the course,” Turner said, citing the killings of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and Tamir Rice in Cleveland. “We’re sick of it, and we need some real allies in this country.”
Arbery was pursued, shot and killed by father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael while jogging in Brunswick, Ga., in February. The two have said they believed him to be a burglar responsible for a series of break-ins in the area. The Brunswick District Attorney’s office recused itself as Gregory McMichael is a longtime investigator for the office.
A video surfaced earlier this week that appears to show the pursuit and shooting, prompting calls for a full investigation from Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Democratic Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.
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