Harry Reid: ‘It’s up to Us’ in Washington To Pass Laws, Create Jobs, So People Stop Rioting

"We are all saddened by what we witnessed unfold in streets of Baltimore. A man is dead who should not be dead. His name was Freddie Gray and Freddie Gray's name will not be forgotten. This young man's death is the latest in a series of disturbing and unnecessary deaths of young men of color at the hands of police and vigilantes. To be clear, violence is never acceptable in any regard. It's never an acceptable response even to tragedies such as these. 

The rioting and looting we're seeing in the streets of Baltimore only further damage our community in a great American city that is already hurting. But we should not let the violence perpetrated by a few to become an excuse to ignore the underlying problem that millions of Americans feel powerless in a face of a system that is rigged against them. It's easy to feel powerless when you see the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. The opportunities to build a better life for yourself and your family are non-existent, non-existent in your community. It is easy to feel devalued when schools in your community are failing.

 It is easy to believe the system is rigged against you when you spent years watching what President Obama called a slow-rolling crisis of troubling police interactions with people of color. No American should ever feel powerless. No American. No American should ever feel like their life is not valued but that is what our system says to many of our fellow citizens. No American should be denied the opportunity to better their lives through their own hard work. 

But that is the reality that too many face. In a nation that prides itself on being a land of opportunity, millions, not thousands, millions of our fellow citizens live every day with little hope of building a better future no matter how hard they try. We cannot condone the violence we see in Baltimore. But we must not ignore the despair and hopelessness that gives rise to this kind of violence.

This isn’t just about inner cities. This is about the deep, crushing poverty that infects rural and suburban communities across our great country. It doesn’t matter if you live in Searchlight, Nevada or the Metropolitan, Las Vegas area which is now more than 2 million people, or in Baltimore, Maryland, when there is no hope, anger and despair move in, that's the way it is. We can't ignore that. So let’s condemn the violence. But let’s not ignore the underlying problem. Let’s not pretend the system is fair. Let’s not pretend everything is OK. Let’s not pretend the path from poverty like the one I traveled is still available to everyone out there as long as they work hard because it's not.

For hard work to bear fruit, there must be opportunity and there must be hope. I can’t imagine what direction my life would have taken without the hope of the American dream. As a little boy, I had hope. As a teenager I had it. I had it in college.

So instead of turning a blind eye, let’s work together and take the problem seriously. There is bipartisan work being done on criminal justice and that's why we need a criminal justice reform and that's a good start. But it's only a start. Ensuring that populations are not unfairly targeted for incarceration will be a positive step. But we also need to be investing in inner cities and rural areas. The only piece of legislation I see on the agenda that does anything to create jobs is a Surface Transportation bill. 

There is nothing else. Look around. That's not enough. We need to do more. It’s up to us here in this Capitol to create these jobs. Democrats and  Republicans must work together to make sure that America have the right to succeed, that America continues to be a land of opportunity for all of our citizens, not some of our citizens."