Civil Rights Activists

"I think the most probably visible historical example of mutual aid in the U.S. that people talk about a lot is, of course, the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast programs and health programs, which were a vital part of the party’s work. And it’s a good example of how social movements often, pretty much always, centrally organize mutual aid, because people come into social movements to get immediate needs met, and they also desperately want to help others facing what they’re facing. And when they’re there, they can build a shared analysis: Hey, why don’t we have food? Why don’t we have shelter? What systems are in place that we all actually want to get to the root causes of?"

"we’re going to do something right now to build the world we want to live in. So it’s a very empowering, participatory kind of work that tends to build people’s ability to mobilize generally."

"We must imagine and build ways of eating, communicating, sheltering, moving, healing, and caring for each other that are not profit-centered, hierarchical, and destructive to our planet. We must practice co-governing, creating participatory, consent-based ways of cooperating that are not based in militarism."

"Mutual aid work plays an immediate role in helping us get through crises, but it also has the potential to build the skills and capacities we need for an entirely new way of living at a moment when we must transform our society or face intensive, uneven suffering followed by species extinction. As we deliver groceries, participate in meetings, sew masks, write letters to prisoners, apply bandages, facilitate relationship skills classes, learn how to protect our work from surveillance, plant gardens, and change diapers, we are strengthening our ability to outnumber the police and military, protect our communities, and build systems that make sure everyone can have food, housing, medicine, dignity, connection, belonging, and creativity in their lives. That is the world we are fighting for. That is the world we can win."

"It was seven years ago this July that Garza reacted to George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murder in the Trayvon Martin case with a viral Facebook post expressing her pain, writing: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. Black Lives Matter.”“ ... Patrisse Cullors, a Southern California activist close to Garza, saw the post and added the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. In New York City, immigration organizer Opal Tometi learned of the Zimmerman verdict after leaving a screening of the Ryan Coogler film Fruitvale Station, about the 2009 police shooting that killed Oscar Grant III. Already emotional, Tometi then read Garza’s viral post...By the next day, Tometi, who knew Garza through the Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity Network, contacted her fellow organizer. She hadn’t yet met Cullors, but in short order, the three joined forces and launched the Black Lives Matter Global Network."

"On a political landscape, Black Lives Matter was just dead in the water (after Zimmerman’s acquittal)... When you look at those polls, basically saying anything about Black Lives Matter — [it] just made everybody mad. And so from a political standpoint, you couldn’t bring Black Lives Matter into a state legislature, because Black Lives Matter was synonymous in people’s heads to, like, the Black Panther Party, and people were not fucking with it."

"Stop saying we are not surprised. That’s a damn shame in itself. I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter. And I will continue that. Stop giving up on black life.”"

"So we know that young people are the present and the future, but what inspires me are older people who are becoming transformed in the service of this movement. We all know that as you get older, you get a little more entrenched in your ways. It's happening to me, I know that's right. But I'm so inspired when I see people who have a way that they do things, have a way that they think about the world, and they're courageous enough to be open to listening to what the experiences are of so many of us who want to live in world that's just and want to live in a world that's equitable. And I'm also inspired by the actions that I'm seeing older people taking in service of this movement. I'm inspired by seeing older people step into their own power and leadership and say, "I'm not passing a torch, I'm helping you light the fire.""

"I was impacted in a way that I didn’t expect...We see black death all the time, and I don’t know what it was about this, but I know I went home and then I woke up in the middle of the night crying. And I picked up my phone and I started clickety-clacking, right?... Patrisse and I, we started talking about building an organizing project around state violence... Patrisse had been working on her own stuff at the time — the Dignity and Power Now. She was just getting that off the ground. All of this stuff kind of came into synergy. I knew designers and artists here in the Bay [Area] who were really excited to help and reached out and said, ‘What can we do?’ And so that’s really the genesis of this."

"Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter."

"Civil-rights organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi put those three words into our minds and hearts seven years ago, when they began to change the country. The sweeping calls for change we see today are not sudden, but the fruits of the labor of activists like them. Their work has given us room to demand more, because black lives don’t truly matter just because people simply say so."

"We also believe that we cannot truly become free when marginalised Black communities are kept at the margins and are forgotten. We don't believe that there can be a trickle-down social justice. We believe that people on the margins must be brought centre."

"We know that it's increasingly more important to step up and stand for all Black lives, including queer and trans folks, and the international community have to play a role in this fight. It is fundamentally about all of our human rights; that includes folks on the continent and folks who are queer or trans."

"Civil-rights organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi put those three words into our minds and hearts seven years ago, when they began to change the country. The sweeping calls for change we see today are not sudden, but the fruits of the labor of activists like them. Their work has given us room to demand more, because black lives don’t truly matter just because people simply say so.... Tometi recognizes the urgency and unique nature of this moment. “Thinking about this moment, for me, leading up to this, it felt like we weren’t working fast enough,” she tells me, sounding exasperated. “Our work wasn’t as effective as it needed to be. We’ve received all of the awards. I’m like, ‘Dear God, I don’t want another award, I want this to end.’ I do not care for any more accolades! This to me is common sense. You don’t want to see people dying and being murdered like this.” I took Tometi’s tone to heart when she said it. There was more exasperation than excitement in her voice."

"We are now in a moment where people have no excuses to deny the injustice that's happening in the middle of a global pandemic. Things feel different this time because we were able to tap into a sense of our own agency, our own power and our genuine love for each other."

"We finally had time to sit at home and reflect on how our society functions and whether or not it's functioning well for all of us. The overwhelming consensus was that it is not, it is insufficient – in fact, it's been unsustainable for decades, if not generations."

"People have begun to engage in mutual aid and support for their neighbours. Even if people didn't have much, they were still looking out for each other. Through this, we began to see the ways in which new webs were being constructed."

"Race and racism is probably the most studied social, economic and political phenomenon in this country, but it's also the least understood. 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 you are."

"When you're sitting at home or living at a slower pace and you see that Black folks in your community are attacked, killed, murdered by vigilantes and by the police, you wake up, you rise to action, and you rise quickly."

"People are really trying to show up in this moment for black people, but I think they are also doing it because they have been mad for a minute, almost like this pandemic was a pause, and they were able to think about what would justice look like, and what is actually going on, and they have been able to reflect on what is going on. I think they have been not O.K. for so many years, and they are finally saying, “Hey, we are going to take it to the streets and say we are going to show up in solidarity with you.”"

"When we first started Black Lives Matter, I always knew that this needed to be a global movement and that we needed more people to participate. The issues of police brutality, extrajudicial killings and anti-Black racism requires everybody to pay attention. I knew from the beginning that the project was big, that the mandate was big and that, if we use new media and technology – social media, specifically – we could get the message out there to thousands, if not millions of people."

"I'm extremely gratified that people have heard and are taking ownership of Black Lives Matter. People now know that in their respective industries and countries, they have the responsibility to ensure that Black people are respected, protected and affirmed."

"We are finally achieving a mass consciousness. We're seeing a widespread awareness and commitment to anti-racism that we have long needed. People are now alert and active because the pandemic demonstrated how interconnected our lives are."

"When we think about how we address problems in this country, we often start from a place of trickle-down justice. So using white folks as the control we say, well, if we make things better for white folks then everybody else is going to get free. But actually it doesn't work that way.... When we talk about the wage gap, we often say women make 78 cents to every dollar that a man makes. You all have heard that before. But those are the statistics for white women and white men. The reality is that black women make something like 64 cents to every 78 cents that white women make. When we talk about Latinas, it goes down to about 58 cents. If we were to talk about indigenous women, if we were to talk about trans women, it would even go further down. So again, if you deal with those who are the most impacted, everybody has an opportunity to benefit from that, rather than dealing with the folks who are not as impacted, and expecting it to trickle down."

"I think there's a few things that we need to be doing. So one is we have to stop treating leaders like superheroes. We are ordinary people attempting to do extraordinary things"

"One thing I just want to underscore is that the world is watching us. We see these rallies in solidarity emerging all across the globe, and I have friends texting me with their images in France and the Netherlands and Costa Rica, and people are showing me that they are showing up in solidarity."

"I absolutely think people are concerned with police brutality. Let me make that absolutely clear. We have been fighting and advocating to stop a war on black lives. And that is how we see it—this is a war on black life. And people understand that this system is filled with all sorts of inequality and injustice, and that implicit bias and just outright racism is embedded in the way that policing is done in this nation—and when you think about it historically, it was founded as a slave patrol."

"The evolution of policing was rooted in that. People recognize that. So their frustration is absolutely about the policing and the criminal-justice system writ large and the racial dimensions of it, and its lethal impact on our communities."

"I was interested in giving folks like black, poor people who’ve been marginalized, brutalized, an opportunity to have more visibility. Before seven years ago, we could barely get the news to talk about police violence, let alone police death."

"While we see that a lot of anger and outrage and frustration was sparked by the barbaric murder of George Floyd, it’s also clear to me that we have been sitting in our homes, navigating the pandemic, dealing with loved ones being sick, dealing with a great deal of fear and concern about what the day and the future will hold."

"We have millions of people who have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment and are living paycheck to paycheck and hand to mouth, and I believe they are just thoroughly fed up and thoroughly beside themselves with grief and concern and despair because the government does not seem to have a plan of action that is dignified and comprehensive and seeks to address the core concerns that the average American has...."

"I probably was the one out of the three of us that was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s get big, let’s get everybody.’ I wasn’t necessarily thinking about organizational structure... I was mostly thinking about building a mass movement that people can be a part of and feel an identity around."

"Yesterday was the first time I cried for joy (after the protests in early June). Seeing the news clearly display our images and our slogans about defunding police, I was moved to see the people got the message. Because for far too long, we weren’t being heard. Part of why we even had to go to -Twitter and had to go to Facebook and had to use social media was because there was a silence around anti-black racism in our society. It was just a practical means of communicating."

"Thinking about this moment, for me, leading up to this, it felt like we weren’t working fast enough... Our work wasn’t as effective as it needed to be. We’ve received all of the awards. I’m like, ‘Dear God, I don’t want another award, I want this to end.’ I do not care for any more accolades! This to me is common sense. You don’t want to see people dying and being murdered like this."

"And so my belief and my view of these protests is that they are different because they are marked by a period that has been deeply personal to millions of Americans and residents of the United States, and that has them more tender or sensitive to what is going on."

"What inspires me these days are immigrants. Immigrants all over the world who are doing the best that they can to make a living, to survive and also to thrive. Right now there are over 244 million people who aren't living in their country of origin. This is a 40 percent increase since the year 2000. So what this tells me is that the disparities across the globe are only getting worse."

"Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It's actually happening all across the globe. And what we need now more than ever is a human rights movement that challenges systemic racism in every single context. ... We need this because the global reality is that black people are subject to all sorts of disparities in most of our most challenging issues of our day. 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."

"People who would normally have been at work now have time to go to a protest or a rally, and have time to think about why they have been struggling so much, and they are thinking, This actually isn’t right and I want to make time, and I have the ability to make time now and make my concerns heard..."

"I've been learning a great deal about interdependence. I've been learning about how to trust your team.... After coming back from a three-month sabbatical... I felt it was really important for my leadership and for my team to also practice stepping back as well as also sometimes stepping in. And what I learned in this process was that we need to acknowledge that different people contribute different strengths, and that in order for our entire team to flourish, we have to allow them to share and allow them to shine.... I saw our team rise up in my absence. They were able to launch new programs, fundraise. And when I came back, I had to give them a lot of gratitude and praise because they showed me that they truly had my back and that they truly had their own backs.... In this process of my sabbatical, I was really reminded of this Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu. I am because you are; you are because I am. And I realized that my own leadership, and the contributions that I'm able to make, is in large part due to the contributions that they make, right? And I have to acknowledge that, and I have to see that, and so my new mantra is, "Keep calm and trust the team." And also, "Keep calm and thank the team.""

"For the heartless attitude towards my fate, as a former officer-pilot of party and Soviet bodies, from authorities of the city of Simferopol, first secretary of the city committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine comrade M.V. Revkin and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Comrade Comrade Lozovoy, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, if upon refusal to permit my residence, on 6 or 7 November 1967, I shall end my life by self-immolation. — Hero of the Soviet Union Reshidov, former commander of the air regiment."

"“Sadly, Kejriwal, instead of taking the opportunity to learn more and walk away from his past support of those who sought plebiscite and independence of Kashmir, has only sided with those who carried out genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits,” he said."

"Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga had earlier tweeted, ‘When a million scoundrels die, a Kejriwal is born.’ He tweeted this on 25th March 2022 reacting to controversial remarks by the Delhi CM in Delhi assembly mocking the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits, which have been depicted in the movie The Kashmir Files."

"Denying the genocide endured by the Kashmiri Pandits, Kejriwal took a swipe at the BJP and advised them to not promote a ”jhoothi” film. “We will grant you honour. We will give you respect. We will take you along in nation building. We won’t ask you to put up the posters of a jhoothi film. At least stop promoting this movie. It does not behoove you. You came to do something good in politics, not for promoting films and posters,” said Kejriwal while sporting a wide grin."

"The BJP should ask Vivek Agnihotri to upload it on YouTube and everyone will see it for free.”"

"[What do you have to say about the man who fired at Shaheen Bagh and has turned out to be an AAP worker, according to the police?] Delhi Police is being used as a political tool. As I told you, BJP has nothing to counter our work with. When nothing worked, they hurled abuses like terrorist, thug and anti-national at me. Delhi Police is their last resort. Suddenly, before elections they have come up with some photos claiming that he is an AAP member. His family members have denied any links with AAP. The country is watching how Amit Shah is coming up with conspiracies at the last moment. The person must be punished, and if he turns out to be an AAP worker, give him double the punishment."

"We should procure this vaccine asap for our children."

"[Do you think EC has done enough to check hate speech in the elections?] I think they could have done much more. They could have stopped whatever is going on. They did take some steps but after the bans were lifted, they began all over again…lost any fear."

"[AAP’s manifesto has promised deshbhakti curriculum. What was the need for it?] Gandhiji had said a student who comes out of school or college should have three qualities — he should be a good human being, be capable of earning for his family and should be a hardcore nationalist. We started the happiness curriculum for making them good human beings, entrepreneurship for pet bharne ke liye (earning a meal) and deshbhakti for making them hardcore nationalists."

"[Political observers feel you are taking a soft nationalist stand.] We are not soft nationalists, we are hardcore nationalists. We have come out of the Anna movement. Under the Anna movement, we put the Indian flag in the hands of every child and it became a matter of pride. We are kattar rashtrabhakt (hardcore patriots)."

""...if such lame excuses are given, then it would be compelled to audit the Delhi government to find out how much money is spent by it to popularise its slogans and messages..." ~ Supreme Court of India judge to Arvind Kejriwal headed Delhi Government while hearing case of air pollution in Delhi. Source article: Delhi Pollution News: Farm fires contribute only 4-10%, not major cause of Delhi pollution, says Supreme Court; Key points: Times of India Dated Nov 15, 2021"