Ayanna Pressley Likens Restricting Birthright Tourism to Buffalo & Charlottesville Mass Shooters

EXCERPT:

PRESSLEY: “In fact, in 2017 in Charlottesville at the Unite the Right rally, when people were brandishing those tiki torches, that’s what they were saying, ‘You will not replace us.’ So it often relies on invasion rhetoric to advance that narrative by portraying black and brown families as an invading force rather than as human beings and people that are entitled to dignity. A parent crossing a border becomes the enemy, a pregnant woman becomes a threat, a child born in the United States becomes proof of a takeover. The consequences of this rhetoric have been deadly. In 2018, a gunman who embraced anti-Semitic replacement rhetoric murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In 2019, the El Paso shooter killed, killed 23 people and described his attack as a response to a supposed Hispanic invasion of Texas. In 2022 in Buffalo, New York, a shooter motivated by replacement ideology killed 10 black Americans while they shopped for groceries. Republicans have the choice. You could focus on healing and uniting our communities, but you were hell-bent on division and hate. As my colleague made clear, we all understand that birth tourism is illegal, is wrong and is rare. That is not really what today’s hearing is about. What this is about is a strategy to codify the Great Replacement Theory in law, to further codify white supremacy and to weaponize the entire federal government in pursuance of it. And that is the fact of the matter.”