Statement from NPEU leadership on the murder of George Floyd

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Katie Barrows, NPEU, 360-624-6936, kbarrows@npeu.org

The Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, IFPTE Local 70, AFL-CIO is strongly disturbed and angered at the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. George Floyd’s murder comes shortly after the murder of Breonna Taylor by police in Louisville, the murder of Tony McDade by police in Tallahassee, and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. These horrific deaths serve as a harsh reminder that anti-blackness and racism inflict pain on people of color every day in America. 

We call on Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to charge all four of the police officers responsible for George Floyd’s murder and swiftly convict them, and support efforts in Minneapolis and localities across the country to divest from and demilitarize police forces. 

These acts of blatant racism have occurred during a global pandemic, in which black Americans are disproportionately dying of coronavirus. It is shameful and inexcusable that policymakers have failed to adequately protect many of the most vulnerable communities from this extreme public health risk. 

As a union of hundreds of nonprofit professionals, our membership works to advance the interests of those who are too often marginalized in our political and economic system. As workers at think tanks, environmental advocacy, and community advocacy groups, we work to  amplify the voices of those who are at the front lines of confronting our unjust economy. To do this, we must ensure that our work is grounded in the need to eradicate white supremacy and the systemic racism that is so deeply ingrained in our nation’s history. 

Even as workers at progressive organizations, our members commonly face microaggressions and discrimination in the workplace. This is why we work to enshrine racial equity provisions in our collective bargaining agreements and end hiring policies with racist and sexist outcomes. We strive to transform the nonprofit sector so that our workplaces can be prime examples of how to truly practice racial equity. Those of us with white privilege need to use it to lift up our black, indigenous, and colleagues of color, so that we can truly live our values. 

The labor movement has no place for hate, and we must come together to support all workers, regardless of their race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender, or disability. And we must condemn white supremacist and anti-black violence in all its forms. 

"The labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.