UNITED STATES: The White House announced on Friday that President Joe Biden is prepared to host and lead an official summit next month to address the violence and hate speech that has ravaged the nation as he works tirelessly to fulfil his campaign promise to “heal the soul of the nation”.
The ‘United We Stand Summit’ will be hosted by the Democrat President himself at the White House on September 15, elaborating on the adverse and “corrosive” effects of violence on public safety and democracy.
Advocates and other political aides urged the President to conduct this special conference after 10 African-Americans were killed at Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May, to highlight that hate speech or violence can never be stopped in one single place since the disease spreads rapidly like wildfire, especially seen in succession in cities like El Paso, Texas, Pittsburgh, and Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “As President Biden said in Buffalo after the horrific mass shooting earlier this year, in the battle for the soul of our nation, ‘we must all enlist in this great cause of America'”.
Most importantly, the summit will be a prominent expression of hope and encouragement that will unite Americans from all races, genders, ethnicities and political affiliations to join this great cause.
Moreover, President Biden will deliver a keynote speech at the gathering, which the WH has notified will include delegations from civil rights groups, faith leaders, business executives, law enforcement, gun violence prevention advocates, ex-members of violent hate groups, victims of extremism and other cultural figures.
The summit will also encourage participation from both Democrat and Republican officials so that the two groups can be reconciled on the grave issue of national violence.
The prevention and elimination of hate speech and hate-filled violence have been one of the top objectives on Biden’s agenda, which led him to victory against former president Donald Trump in 2020. He forcefully brought himself out of the retirement mould to work on political and social divides and promote national unity, although that still remains a work in progress.
The League of United Latin American Citizens’ CEO, Sindy Benavides, noted that the summit was established following the Buffalo shooting massacre because she, the Anti-Defamation League, the National Action Network, and other organisations wanted to pressure the Biden administration to directly address threats from extremists.
“As civil rights organizations, social justice organizations, we fight every day against this, and we wanted to make sure to acknowledge that the government needs to have a leading role in addressing right-wing extremism,” she said.
Benavides expressed hope that “long-term solutions” would come out of the summit while also stating that the conference would help mobilise the nation to address the threats of violence motivated by hatred.
“What’s important to us is addressing mental health, gun control reform, addressing misinformation, disinformation and malinformation,” she said.
“We want policymakers to focus on common sense solutions so we don’t see this type of violence in our communities. And we want to see the implementation of policies that reduce violence.”
It is to be emphasized that last year Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act after a slew of anti-Asian crimes emerged in several states. The act received more press attention when Biden strategically invited one of South Asia’s most influential pop groups, the South Korean boy group BTS, to deliberate on the issue of Asian hate and the power of music and art.
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