Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The police are not taking accountability for the violence that they enact in our communities, and yet there isn't as much outrage about that as there is about some broken windows and lost property.
There is no separation between the black community and the LGBT community. As a black, queer woman myself, I often have to assert, right, that it's not one or the other but that I am all of these things.
When people say, 'Well, I don't talk to my family because they're all conservatives,' or 'I don't talk to my family because they're racist,' I'm, like, 'No, no, no; that's exactly who you need to be talking to.'
I need to create an environment where I can be my best self, and that means being unapologetic about saying no to things that don't serve me or move me closer to my purpose and the things that I care about the most.
It's not lost on me that every single person who told their story about Harvey Weinstein talked about how they were silenced, how they were encouraged not to speak up, how they were embarrassed or ashamed to speak up.
We've said from the very beginning Black Lives Matter is a network and also, as a broad set of individuals, is an organization moving to transform the way our society values black lives. It's not an 'Internet movement.'
We are clear that all lives matter, but we live in a world where that's not actually happening in practice. So if we want to get to the place where all lives matter, then we have to make sure that black lives matter, too.
What it takes to get people from liking and sharing and retweeting to organising is a hard and long process. Technology has really changed the game in terms of how people participate and what they decide to participate in.
I think that building political power has to come from the outside and from within. Meaning, we have to build political alternatives to the existing system, and we have to try to impact what is happening in the existing system.
We understand that, in our communities, black trans folk, gender-nonconforming folk, black queer folk, black women, black disabled folk - we have been leading movements for a long time, but we have been erased from the official narrative.
I have a lot of respect for President Obama, and while I deeply disagree with some of his actions or lack of action on issues I care about, I still recognize the significance of the first black presidency and the challenges that come with that.
There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.
This country was created from stolen land and stolen labor. And from a moral perspective, but also from a practical one, everybody knows that when you steal, you're always looking over your shoulder because you know that somebody may steal it back.
We can make black lives matter in the labor movement by building the kinds of movements that black women need to shape a new economy and a new democracy that don't force them to choose between making a living and being a part of a healthy democracy.
When we sit and think about what the world needs to looks like in order for black lives to actually matter, there is a debate: What is going to make our communities safe? How do we deal with harm? How do we solve problems that come up in our communities?
There is hope for humanity, but in order for us to get there, we really have to interrogate not just what it takes to change laws, but what it takes to change culture that supports laws that uplift humanity and also supports laws that serve to denigrate it.
Every successful social movement in this country's history has used disruption as a strategy to fight for social change. Whether it was the Boston Tea Party to the sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the South, no change has been won without disruptive action.
It took me a long time to figure out that I didn't have to do everything, that it was actually a lot more helpful if I did a couple things really, really well than a whole bunch of things really badly, or nothing at all, because the whole thing was overwhelming.
Both Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had guns on them, which is part of their Second Amendment right. It is a part of a culture that is largely protected by special-interest groups like the N.R.A., but the right to bear arms, it seems, only exists for white people.
We need the best and the brightest thinkers, strategists, coders, surveillance experts, tech geeks, and disruptors to utilize all of the tools we have available to us to build the world that we want to see. A world where black lives matter. A world where all lives matter.
If you're to look at people's social networks, not a lot of white people have a social network that has lots of black people - it doesn't happen. It makes sense to me that online would be as segregated as offline because it's just mimicking patterns that exist in real life.
What we've seen is an attempt by mainstream politics and politicians to co-opt movements that galvanize people in order for them to move closer to their own goals and objectives. We don't think that playing a corrupt game is going to bring change and make black lives matter.
Black Lives Matter started from a post that I put on Facebook after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, just trying to process what had happened and wanting to find community around being in a lot of grief and having a lot of rage.
Black Lives Matter, as a network, will not, does not, has not, ain't going to endorse any candidates. Now if there are activists within the movement that want to do that independently, they should feel free, and if that's what makes sense for their local conditions, that's fantastic.
Whether or not you call it Black Lives Matter, whether or not you put a hashtag in front of it, whether or not you call it the Movement for Black Lives, all of that is irrelevant. Because there was resistance before Black Lives Matter, and there will be resistance after Black Lives Matter.
The reason that I started the Black Futures Lab is because I have some clarity about what I think needs to happen in relationship to electoral organizing. It's not a destination. It is a set of tools that we use to engage people that we care about, en masse, around issues that are important to us.
Coming out of the 2016 election, there was a few things that became really clear. One, that black people deserve to have vehicles that represent the breadth of our interests. Two, that we really need to do a better job of being able to communicate what conditions and experiences our communities are facing.
The night that George Zimmerman was acquitted, I think, for black people all over the world, there was a collective feeling of incredible grief and incredible rage. And that verdict not only let George Zimmerman go home to his family, but it sent a message to black people everywhere that our lives did not matter.
The reality is that race in the United States operates on a spectrum from black to white. Doesn't mean that people who are in between don't experience racism, but it means that the closer you are to white on that spectrum, the better off you are. And the closer to black that you are on that spectrum, the worse off your are.