“We Are All Feeling This”: Mayor Bill de Blasio Responds To Eric Garner’s Death On Hot 97

The nation has experienced one of its most difficult weeks in recent memory. First, we received a dumbfounding verdict from the Ferguson, MO grand jury that dismissed Officer Darren Wilson for the outright murder of unarmed teen Michael Brown. Then exactly one week later, a jury in New York followed suit and chose not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the slaying of Staten Island chokehold victim Eric Garner, doubling down on the anger, frustration and defeat many of us were already feeling going into last week’s holiday break.

While many of us took to the street, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t exactly have that option available to him. After issuing a statement immediately following the verdict that echoed the pain of a nation and his city, the mayor took to Hot 97  to continue the discussion and elaborate a bit on that statement. Speaking with Ebro and Pete Rosenberg early this morning, de Blasio spoke earnestly about the sorrow he was feeling not just as the leader of one of the country’s greatest cities, but as a father raising a child in that city, which (up until very recently) overwhelmingly targeted black men of any age or shade in their stop & frisk tactics.

You can listen to the entirety of his personal reaction from this morning down below, just be sure to stay tuned for updates on the aftermath of the non-indictment, as the Justice Department has claimed that they will be launching their own internal investigation in the weeks to come.