Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It's a love note for our people, but it's also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us. "

Opal Tometi

Know

Black

People

Related Quotes:

" I'm really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing. "

" President Trump is mentally incapable of imagining the humanity of anyone who looks different from him or hails from a different nation. "

" Black immigrants and refugees have just as much at stake in the fight to make Black Lives Matter as African Americans do. "

" When we say 'Black Lives Matter,' we're not saying that any other life doesn't matter. That has never, ever been our message. Our message has always been from a place of love. "

" I have three godkids that are just so gorgeous; I love them dearly, and they keep me going. "

Opal Tometi

Love

Keep

" Only when the oppressed are heard can we have an honest solutions based dialogue. "

" My parents migrated to Phoenix, AZ, in the '80s, and I watched them work tirelessly to provide for me and my siblings as they encouraged us to pursue our dreams. "

Opal Tometi

Phoenix

Work

" We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter. "

" We came in as organizers before creating the Black Lives Matter network and project, and we are still organizers, strategists, political thinkers, and philosophers, so we actually have a lot ideas and a lot of really thought out strategies. "

" The reality is that anti-black racism is a global phenomenon, and it looks different in each context, but if you look at the outcomes, if you listen and look at the experiences, you will see that it's clear, and it's happening across the globe. "

" From my youngest brother to immigrant women to black queer folks, those are the people who keep me going. When I think about their various acts of courage, it reminds me that I am not alone and that we can do even more, and we deserve more, so we have to keep going. "

" Anti-black racism operates at a society-wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices, and beliefs to oppress and disempower black communities. "

" I just look back at my time in college and think about how much my community activism and my work in neighborhoods really informed my actual academic career and beyond... It can provide a way better learning than the traditional classroom setting. "

" If black lives mattered, I believe that policing and immigration enforcement would not be the devastating force that it is in our communities. "

" The black immigrant experience in the U.S. must be understood not in contrast to the African American experience but as an integral part of it. "

" We deserve to live in a world where there's no impunity, but beyond this question of impunity, there are all these structures that are actually doing a disservice to our people. "

" As a community organizer who holds a degree in history, I understand the fascination with history. However, there is a tendency for many of us to get engrossed in the recounting of our history, which often amounts to purely intellectual activity without material action. "

" I have always felt like I want to change the course of history. "

Opal Tometi

History

Want

" The U.S. government has rarely, if ever, used the criminal history of a certain immigrant population in determining if the whole community should be allowed to remain in the country under a humanitarian program, like TPS. "

" Some of us have held the hands of friends or brothers as they struggled with military and police academy recruiters, and though many of them never dreamed of being policemen, a lack of opportunities led them to those positions. "

" Fortunately, the leadership of black immigrant communities has always been present in all black liberation movements from leaders like Marcus Garvey to Shirley Chisholm to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte. We know this is our legacy. "

" Our communities are reeling from poverty, from unemployment, from discrimination of all sorts and different interactions that they're having with the law enforcement, and education system, and so on. "

" Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publically acceptable, leaving the quality of black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade. "

" The U.S.' refusal to acknowledge the plight of displaced Haitians and maintaining inhumane practices of neglect, disrespect, and violence amounts to a gross violation of human rights. "

" Many of the concessions that leading Democrats seem willing to make - from cutting diversity visas to chipping away at family visas - would be made on the backs of black immigrants, people from Africa and the Caribbean who deserve these policies to remain intact as some of the few legal tools they have to immigrate to this country. "

" There was a time when my uncle was in an immigration detention center, and members of our community would take turns visiting him each weekend. That instilled in me the value of taking care of each other even if the systems aren't working in your favor. "

" I think it's really important that we understand the ways in which blackness plays out, right, and discrimination against black people impacts different communities in different ways but ultimately leaves them undermined and really devalued in our society. "

" To me and to a number of other activists from the U.S., we believe that the human rights movement has to evolve and understand the global implications of structural racism. This means engaging the United Nations and a variety of other human rights bodies. "

" If things aren't working for us, it is our duty to rise up. "

Opal Tometi

Rise

" As an immigrant justice advocate, I, of course, want legal status for everyone trying to make it in this country. "