Excerpts from Joe Biden's Address to the Nation in Philadelphia, June 2, 2020

"...'I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.' [These were] George Floyd’s last words, but they didn’t die with him. They’re still being heard echoing all across this nation. They speak to a nation, where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk. They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to the virus, and 40 million have filed for unemployment, with the disproportionate number of those deaths... concentrated in black and Brown communities. And they speak to a nation where every day millions of people... are saying to themselves: 'I can’t breathe.'

"It’s a wake-up call to our nation... Our country is crying out for leadership, leadership that can unite us, leadership that brings us together, leadership that can recognize pain and deep grief of communities that have had a knee on their neck for a long time.

"There’s no place for violence; [there is] no place for looting or destroying property or burning churches or destroying businesses. Many of them built by the very people of color who, for the first time in their lives, were beginning to realize their dreams...; nor is it acceptable for our police sworn to protect and serve all people to escalate tension and resort to excessive violence.

"We need to distinguish between legitimate, peaceful protest and opportunistic violent destruction. We have to be vigilant about the violence that’s being done by this incumbent president to our economy and to the pursuit of justice...

"This is a nation of values. Our freedom to speak is a cherished knowledge that lives inside every American... We’re not allowing any president to quiet our voice. We won’t let those who see this as an opportunity to sow chaos, throw up a smoke screen, to distract us from real legitimate grievances at the heart of these protests. We can’t, we can’t leave this moment, we can’t leave this moment thinking that we can once again turn away and do nothing. We can’t do that this time. We just can’t. The moment has come for our nation to deal with systemic racism, to deal with the growing economic inequity that exists in our nation, to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation made to so many...

"Today in America is hard to keep faith that justice is at hand. I know that; you know that. Pain is raw. The pain is real. The president of United States must be part of the solution, not the problem, but this president today is part of the problem and accelerates it. When he twitted the words, 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts,' they weren’t the words of the president, they were words of a racist Miami police chief in the 60's. When he tweeted that 'Protesters would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, when people would have been really hurt.' They weren’t the words of a president. They were the kind of words Bull Connor would have used unleashing his dogs on innocent women and children.

"The American story is a story about action and reaction. That’s what actually works. We can’t be naive about it. I wish I could say that hate began with Donald Trump and will end with him. It didn’t, and it won’t. American history isn’t a fairy tale with a guaranteed happy ending. The battle for the soul of this nation has been a constant push and pull for more than 240 years, a tug of war between the American ideal that we’re all created equal, and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. The honest truth is that both elements are part the American character, both elements. At our best, the American ideal wins out. But it’s never a route, it’s always a fight and the battle is never fully won. But we can’t ignore the truth that we’re at our best when we open our hearts rather than to clench our fist.

"Donald Trump has turned this country into battlefield of old resentments and fresh fears. He thinks division helps him. His narcissism has become more important than the nation’s well being that he leads. I ask every American, I mean this from the bottom of my heart: ask every American, look at where we are now... Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Is this what we want to pass onto our children and our grandchildren: fear, anger, and finger pointing rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness? Or do we want to be the America we know we can be? The America we know in our hearts we could be and should be.

"Look, I look at the presidency as a very big job, and nobody will get it right every time. I won’t either, but I promise you this, I won’t traffic in fear and division. I won’t fan the flames of hate. I’ll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country and not use them for political gain. I’ll do my job, and I will take responsibility. I won’t blame others. I’ll never forget... I promise you. This job is not about me. It’s about you; it’s about us...

"My fellow Americans, we’re facing formidable enemies. They include not only the coronavirus and its terrible impact on our lives and livelihoods, but also the selfishness and fear that have loomed over our national life for the last three years... Defeating those enemies requires us to do our duty, and that duty includes remembering who we should be... We should be the America of FDR and Eisenhower, of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. ...We should be the America that cherishes life, liberty, and courage and, above all, we should be the America that cherishes each other...

"We’re a nation in pain. We must not let our pain destroy us. We’re a nation enraged. We cannot let our rage consume us. We’re a nation that’s exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us. As president, it is my commitment to all of you to lead... and to listen... When we stand together finally as one America, we will rise stronger than we were before... This is the United States of America. There’s never been anything we’ve been unable to do when we set our mind to do it, and we’ve done it together... May God bless you all... Thank you."

-Joe Biden, Philadelphia, June 2, 2020