DC delegate: Congress took up police reform due to ‘impatience in the streets’

Washington, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D) said Sunday that the Black Lives Matter movement’s concerns could be addressed with legislative solutions, pointing to police reform bills in both chambers of Congress.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Holmes-Norton addressed the previous segment, in which activist Walter “Hawk” Newsome said many activists had lost patience or trust in establishment Black Democrats.

“I’ve been in the streets enough myself to understand that impatience, but you send people like me to Congress to do something about it,” Holmes-Norton told Fox News’s Chris Wallace.

“The impatience in the streets is way we have the legislation that was passed,” she added, referencing the House’s proposal, which passed Thursday in a 236-181 vote. “That is why democracy works.”

Reminded by Wallace that the Senate’s proposal was blocked by the Democratic minority, Holmes-Norton called the Senate bill a “disgrace” that “didn’t even rise to the level of a remedy.”

“I’m not sure I would have blocked their bill, perhaps their bill should have been exposed,” she added.

Wallace went on to ask Holmes-Norton about the toppling or defacement of Confederate statues or those of other figures associated with racism, including Christopher Columbus and Andrew Jackson.

Holmes-Norton responded that she thought such statues should be removed, particularly D.C.’s statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike, who she said “may have been the worst of them,” but said they should be legally removed through legislation.

“We would hope that we would be given the opportunity to do this in regular order because you have a Congress, at least in the House of Representatives,” receptive to removing them, Holmes-Norton said.

“I do not endorse vandalism as a way to deal with what we are seeing in the streets, that’s what they send people like me to Congress for,” she said.