Rachel Talbot Ross

We can no longer take your statements if you think that that is the way to build relationships with our community.

We can no longer take your statements if you think that is the only action that is needed to stop the brutal violence, the genocide that has been waged against us since you stole this land from the indigenous Native people.

We no longer want your statements if you will use it to build your own resume and your political career. We no longer want your statement if you release it on Facebook but you never give it any voice when you’re speaking to the chamber of commerce.

You can keep your statement if that means you can ignore me in the hallways of the workplace, if you can ignore my kids in your schools, that you can not have a curriculum that reflects this history of their country and the enslavement on which their economy was built.

You can keep your statement if it’s being used to silence and kill and murder and arrest and detain the people that you owe your very lives to.

But put out your statement if it reflects a truth that you live by and expresses the way that you will be held accountable in all of your actions to end racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia.

If that statement reveals the truth of how you will be held accountable, how you will be held to a standard that allows us to vote you out of office, then release your statement.

Use your voice to speak what you are going to do to stop voter suppression, to stop gentrification, to stop racial health disparity, and to stop mass incarceration. Use your statement for that.

The data that were just released by the Center for Disease Control show that the new [COVID-19] infection rate for Black and African Americans in Maine is 22.5 percent of the total for whom race is known.

22.53 percent of the infection. Last week it was 20.7. You can do the math. The rate for people of color is now 27.45 percent.

Last week, it was 25 percent. Now, over one in four people who have COVID in Maine is a person of color, even though only one in 20 Mainers is a person of color. Over one in five people who have COVID in Maine is Black.

I’ll say that again. Over one in five people who have COVID in Maine is Black, even though only one in 60 Mainers is Black. So if you are here tonight, if you have to write a statement right now, send it to the governor. Send it to the Speaker of the House.

Send it to the Senate President. Send it to the Maine Municipal Association. Send it to the Sheriffs’ Association. Send it to every law enforcement agency in the state.