Briahna Joy Gray, the former press secretary for Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, on Wednesday, said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) thanking George Floyd for “sacrificing” his life for “justice” shows how she is “detached from the reality of lived lives.”
Pelosi’s remarks came during a press conference outside the Capitol just after a Minneapolis jury on Tuesday found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all criminal charges he faced for Floyd’s murder.
“Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice,” Pelosi said, prompting mixed reactions from some Capitol Hill staffers and commentators on social media, including one who called it a “bizarre statement.”
During an interview Wednesday on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Gray argued that Pelosi was trying to use Floyd’s death in a “symbolic, superficial way.”
“It reveals the extent to which a lot of these public figures are truly detached from the reality of lived lives, not just of communities that are of a different racial background or class background, but the whole gamut of being in touch with regular people who understand what the conversation around George Floyd and policing more broadly has been like,” Gray explained.
Gray, who is also a contributing editor for Current Affairs magazine, added that public figures like Pelosi “are going to see George Floyd as a totem that shows that you are on the right side of some kind of political football field.”
Watch part of Gray’s interview above.
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