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" I believe that our communities can benefit if they know about and participate in the U.N.'s various human rights forums. "
Opal Tometi
Know
I Believe
Human Rights
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" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Legal
People
Family
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Time
Learning
Work
" Being in the immigrant rights space, I've heard a lot of transactional talk with questions like, 'When will black people show up for immigrants?' "
Opal Tometi
Questions
People
Black
" I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don't live and we don't fight for one specific struggle. "
Opal Tometi
Fight
Live
Saying
" I was in awe of previous black liberation struggle leaders - Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. Black Lives Matter has been that. "
Opal Tometi
Struggle
Black
Matter
" I challenge us all to have the courage of our convictions to fight for a fair, justice and inclusive society. "
Opal Tometi
Fight
Courage
Fair
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Level
Black
Beliefs
" We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America. "
Opal Tometi
People
Against
America
" Lean into your curiosity about any issue, and there will likely be people to share a little bit more of their knowledge and insight and give you ideas on how to make change. "
Opal Tometi
Change
Curiosity
Knowledge
" President Trump is mentally incapable of imagining the humanity of anyone who looks different from him or hails from a different nation. "
Opal Tometi
Nation
Him
Looks
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
People
Black
Society
" Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case. "
Opal Tometi
Progress
People
Black
" Despite claims that there are good and bad cops, we know that the system is failing everyone - including the police. "
Opal Tometi
Know
Good And Bad
Good
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Education
Law
Poverty
" We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter. "
Opal Tometi
Matter
Create
Black
" We know that there are people in our nation, black people, who are systematically being disenfranchised in a number of spheres in our lives. "
Opal Tometi
Number
Nation
Know
" Get involved in your neighborhood. That's how I got really, really committed to the immigrant rights movement. "
Opal Tometi
Movement
Rights
Immigrant
" What we are oftentimes reminding people of is the fact that the history of police in the U.S. was that they were slave patrols. They were quite literally created in order to capture enslaved Africans. "
Opal Tometi
Slave
Capture
History
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Say
Place
Love
" If things aren't working for us, it is our duty to rise up. "
Opal Tometi
Rise
Us
Up
" African-Americans and black immigrants share a resilience and a determination for a better life. "
Opal Tometi
Black
Life
Determination
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Opportunities
Hands
Friends
" I'm really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing. "
Opal Tometi
Beyond
Safety
Looking
" We deserve a multiracial democracy that works for all of us. "
Opal Tometi
Us
Works
Democracy
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Understand
Rights
Racism
" I am the executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is the country's only national immigrant rights organization for black immigrants and African Americans. Being the daughter of Nigerian immigrants really drove me to do this type of work. "
Opal Tometi
Me
Daughter
Black
" Police cannot be allowed to continue aggressive, violent, and often unconstitutional policing with impunity. "
Opal Tometi
Aggressive
Police
Cannot
" In my own personal experience, I've had different family members who have been held in immigration detention because they've had some sort of challenge financially, and they were making difficult decisions, and that led to their immigration detention and, eventually, deportation. "
Opal Tometi
Family
Challenge
Experience
" Black immigrants and refugees have just as much at stake in the fight to make Black Lives Matter as African Americans do. "
Opal Tometi
Fight
Immigrants
Black
" Without networks like the Black Immigration Network, organizations like Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees would not get the support and resources and amplification that their voices that they need and deserve. "
Opal Tometi
Black
Immigration
Need