Top 55 Patrisse Cullors Quotes

I think our work as movement leaders isn’t just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody?

White people who voted for Trump decided to invest in a president who underwrites white supremacy in the guise of populism.

What was most important, for me, is that I could share what I experience as a young person – in particular, what impact incarceration and policing had on my life and my family’s life.

When folks say ‘identity politics’ don’t matter, it simply reinforces the norm of a white, middle-class, cis narrative and further marginalizes the rest of us who don’t share that identity.

With support from techies, designers, artists and thousands of activists across the country, Black Lives Matter is now an online-to-offline political movement, affirming the humanity and resilience of black communities.

‘The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman’ is a reminder that people across the world are rebelling against norms and forging new paths for the most marginalized people in their own communities.

Black women voted against Roy Moore not because they necessarily wanted the other guy; they voted against Roy Moore because they knew that would be better for the people of Alabama and, to be frank, better for the rest of the country.

I’ve been in movement work since I was 16 years old. Black Lives Matter becomes an important part of the story, but it’s not the only part of the story.

Each and every one of us has multiple identities, and this is a fact that should be celebrated. I for example, am a queer black woman who grew up poor in Los Angeles.

The brutal history of colonialism is one in which white people literally stole land and people for their own gain and material wealth.

We rarely know what motivates somebody in their work, and it’s usually a particular moment in their life. For me, that moment is my brother’s incarceration and the ways in which this country has decided to neglect, abuse, and sometimes torture people with severe mental illness, especially if they’re black.

With abolition, it’s necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it’s equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

Before BLM, there was a dormancy in our black freedom movement. Obviously many of us were doing work, but we’ve been able to reignite a whole entire new generation, not just inside the U.S. but across the globe, centering black people and centering the fight against white supremacy.

Black Lives Matter is one iteration of a much larger struggle to fight for black people’s freedom.

It was white people who got Trump into office.

Our communities must demand dignified housing, satisfying jobs, and proper labor conditions; our educational system must be culturally relevant, multi-lingual, and teach our histories. Our value should not be determined by legal records.

Wherever there are communities fighting for freedom and liberation, there are serious tensions.

When I was younger, I had these romantic ideas about the Black Panther Party and what it meant to be a part of the civil rights movement. Then we’re here, and it’s dangerous. And it’s dangerous to say, ‘Black lives matter.’

I don’t dislike my appearance at all.

Many of us believed that Black Lives Matter would move this country to not only reckon with white racism but to usher in new laws and practices that would curb vigilantism and law enforcement violence. But, instead, white nationalism was nurtured and began to take root among the American people.

Local law enforcement agencies, national police authorities, and other state-operated surveillance has created a hostile environment for communities at the margins.

The first thing that Black Lives Matter had to do was remind people that racism existed in this country because when we had Obama, people thought we were post-racial. That was the debate. Is racism over? And very quickly, we understood that it was not over.

I want to see Black Lives Matter be able to ultimately reduce law enforcement funding.

The Black Lives Matter National Network and the movement at large are sophisticated. We’re not easily won over by talking points and campaign trail pledges. We want to see meaningful collaboration and a genuine transformation of American democracy.

Black women’s lives have never been shown any value in America.

Statistics are easy to remove ourselves from. A story, you are implicated in, and you have to choose what side you are going to be on.

I think part of what we’re seeing in the rise of white nationalism is their response to Black Lives Matter, is their response to an ever-increasing fight for equal rights, for civil rights, and for human rights.

Since his inauguration, Trump has signed numerous executive orders that negatively impact poor, black and brown, queer, Muslim, and other communities.

In order to reverse the maternal health crisis for black women in the U.S., we need concrete policies from our leaders and better protocols from hospitals.

I don’t like how cruel humans can be.

Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast, and print outlets as we organize for change.

What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving rather than their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.

The Trump administration has done everything in its power to uphold the harsh racist reality we have faced.

We should be developing spaces and places that are thinking about how we care for the group vs. asking the individual to take care of themselves.

Our decentralized, localized leadership structure has really allowed for Black Lives Matter structures in their own communities to take on the state and take on some of the most egregious acts against black people.

Trump is literally the epitome of evil, all the evils of this country – be it racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia.

My first reaction to Trump being elected was a visceral one. I cried for black people in general but, more particularly, for those of us at the margins who have been struggling and who have never received enough support.

In high school, I came out to my friends as queer. My entire world opened up; this was a monumental step toward unveiling my truest self. I had my first girlfriend when I was sixteen years old.

I am scared every day.

I developed ‘Power: From the Mouths of the Occupied’ while I was an Artist in Residence at Kalamazoo College.

Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.

We live in a world where black people are targeted for death and destruction, and we should not be surprised when moments such as these occur – in fact, Charlottesville confirms the violence that black people endure every day.

I’ve been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison.

In 2013, I helped create a black-centered political will- and movement-building project called #BlackLivesMatter.

The story of Black Lives Matter starts before Black Lives Matter. The story of Black Lives Matter, for me, starts with my childhood.

So many stories have been told about Black Lives Matter. The beauty of building out a decentralized network, the beauty of building out something that’s a hashtag, is that so many people can take it and run with it. The bad part about that is so many folks can take it and run with it – and misuse it and co-opt it.

When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children – me, my five brothers, and three sisters – could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.

In ‘When They Call You a Terrorist,’ I reflect on my time growing up in Van Nuys, California, surrounded by my devoted family and supportive friends, weaving our experiences into the larger picture of how predominantly marginalized neighborhoods are under constant systemic attack.

We have to look at queerness as a means towards challenging normativity.

Policing was developed, created, and implemented for the elite, and – in the case of the United States – the elites were and almost entirely remain white, upper middle class, cisgender straight men.

The Internet is the most democratic communication platform in history, largely because we’ve had network neutrality rules that make sure all web traffic is treated equally, and no voices are discriminated against.

What we acknowledged as a nation during the one-and-a-half year trial of George Zimmerman is that the white majority’s public imagination of black people was based on their fear of us, not the reality of who we are.