Biden says action needed against 'hate-fueled violence' after racist shooting in Florida

President Joe Biden called Monday for action to end the type of "hate-fueled violence" that authorities said motivated a white man to fatally shoot three Black people at a Florida store over the weekend. Biden said people must speak out about injustice.

- 

WASHINGTON (AP) — "We can't let hate prevail, and it's on the rise. It's not diminishing," Biden said at the White House as he met with civil rights advocates and the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.

"Silence, I believe, we've all said many times, silence is complicity," Biden said. "We're not going to remain silent, and so we have to act against this hatefueled violence."

Biden's meeting with the King family and other civil rights advocates came two days after Saturday's racist attack in Jacksonville, Florida. Three Black people were shot to death by a white man wearing a mask and firing a weapon emblazoned with a swastika. The shooter, who had also posted racist writings, killed himself.

Asked how he would stop hatred, Biden said: "By talking directly to the American people because I think the vast majority of the American people agree with this table," referring to the civil rights advocates who were in the room with him. "But we have to understand, this is serious."

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was at the meeting, said most people in the United States have more in common with each other than what divides them.

"Yet there are those who are intentionally trying to divide us as a nation, and I believe each of us has a duty, a duty to not allow factions to sever our unity," said Harris, the first Black person elected vice president. "Our diversity is our strength, and our unity is our power as a nation, and I do believe that we must be guided by knowing that we have so much more in common than what separates us."