U.S. Congresswoman Cindy Axne

As the recent deaths of African Americans George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have inspired protests in Iowa and across the globe the last couple weeks, U.S. Representative Cindy Axne (D) shares her thoughts on the issue.

Axne tells Raccoon Valley Radio that the country must face head on the broken and racist systems that failed Floyd, Taylor, and Arbery, and many other African Americans. She says these protests are hardly the first to call out these injustices, and she has spent the recent days talking with leaders in the City of Des Moines, the Iowa NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), other state and community leaders, and Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert, “Law enforcement does a very important job in our communities and they exist to keep us safe. It’s a really important job but we need to make sure that we hold them to a high standard that reflects that importance. And so we have an opportunity at this point to address how we deal with systemic issues of racism in this country, how we look at better training for our police officers.”

Axne also mentions that for the protests in Des Moines, some have used them as a cover for subversive violence and vandalism, and she feels that Iowans must not allow their co-opting of this cause to succeed by focusing only on the destruction. To hear more from Axne on this and other topics, listen to Thursday’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County program at raccoonvalleyradio.com.