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" I'm really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing. "
Opal Tometi
Beyond
Safety
Looking
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" My mom, my aunts, and all the Nigerian women in my life have been so fierce and strong. I have only grown up around powerful women, so I have a strong sense of self and our power. "
Opal Tometi
Mom
Self
Women
" I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa. People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living. "
Opal Tometi
Change
Living
People
" 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
" 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
" Racism should be a core concern for all Americans in every area of our lives. "
Opal Tometi
Area
Should
Racism
" 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
" We can't continue to sit on our hands and sit idly by as people are being brutalized, disenfranchised, and left out of the system. "
Opal Tometi
System
People
Out
" 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
" I call on Democrats to use their leverage to fight for a clean DREAM Act and to reject Trump's racist agenda - not only in word but in deed. "
Opal Tometi
Democrats
Only
Dream
" 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
" We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America. "
Opal Tometi
People
Against
America
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Community
Country
Government
" 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
" 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
" 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
" African-Americans and black immigrants share a resilience and a determination for a better life. "
Opal Tometi
Black
Life
Determination
" I have always felt like I want to change the course of history. "
Opal Tometi
History
Like
Want
" 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
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Ending
Racism
Quality
" If black lives mattered, I believe that policing and immigration enforcement would not be the devastating force that it is in our communities. "
Opal Tometi
I Believe
Immigration
Black
" 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
" Implicit bias - our subconscious associations of race - permeates everything that we do. And we must pursue systemic accountability to fix it. "
Opal Tometi
Pursue
Accountability
Bias
" Due to broken windows policing, the following interactions can lead to tickets, arrests and summonses, warrants if tickets go unpaid and, in some cases, violence: jaywalking, sleeping on a park bench, spitting, putting your feet up on the subway, and more. "
Opal Tometi
Feet
Violence
Bench
" 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
" Civility is the recognition that all people have dignity that's inherent to their person, no matter their religion, race, gender, sexuality, or ability. "
Opal Tometi
Gender
Religion
Recognition
" 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
" We have to start imagining a new reality - this will mean fewer police and more social workers and teachers. This will mean creating more economic possibilities and investment that preserves and does not displace our communities. "
Opal Tometi
New
Reality
Start
" 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. "
Opal Tometi
Disrespect
Human Rights
Violence
" The U.S. has long characterized Haitian immigrants as criminals. This tradition began in 1963 when the first boat of Haitians seeking political asylum was summarily rejected by U.S. immigration officials, while at the same time the U.S. admitted thousands of Cubans as refugees and political asylees. "
Opal Tometi
Boat
Political
Long
" 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