WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama met behind closed doors for several hours Wednesday with 33 representatives from civil rights groups, law enforcement and state and local government, seeking to forge a consensus on how best to address racial bias in policing.
The session came a day after Obama delivered remarks in Dallas that honored the five police officers killed a week ago during a peaceful protest that came in response to recent shootings of two African American men in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul, Minn. On Thursday, the president is scheduled to participate in a town-hall event on race that will be simultaneously televised on ESPN and ABC.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president hopes “to try to move the ball forward” and help communities across the United States take concrete steps to defuse the kind of deadly confrontations that regularly take place between police and people of color.
And while Earnest did not rule out the idea of the federal government taking additional action, he said the meeting was also aimed at asking: “What can local political leaders do more of? What can law enforcement officials do more of? What can civil rights leaders do more of? What can community leaders do more to repair this trust that in too many communities has been frayed?”
The list of invitees included four mayors, five chiefs of police and more than half a dozen civil rights leaders. Some of those attending hailed from communities that have experienced violence in the past couple of weeks, including Pastor Frederick Haynes of South Dallas’s Friendship-West Baptist Church and Mayor Chris Coleman of St. Paul. Others hailed from cities and states with large minority populations such as Los Angeles, Newark, Georgia and Maryland.
In part, Obama convened the meeting to ensure the issue of gun violence and racial inequities does not fade the way as it often does once Americans turn their focus away from high-profile shooting incidents to other matters. On Tuesday, he lamented how quickly the public reverts to habitual complacency once it gets a little distance from searing events.
“And I’ve seen how a spirit of unity, born of tragedy, can gradually dissipate, overtaken by the return to business as usual, by inertia and old habits and expediency,” he said. “I see how easily we slip back into our old notions, because they’re comfortable, we’re used to them.”
On Wednesday, the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors announced they would work with the White House “to convene 100 community conversations on race relations, justice, policing and equality.”
“Bringing communities together in constructive, civil discourse is a key step in achieving shared goals – like keeping our neighborhoods safe and expanding opportunities for our residents,” the two groups said in a joint statement.