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.
We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America.
I’m really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing.
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.
We deserve a multiracial democracy that works for all of us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Only when the oppressed are heard can we have an honest solutions based dialogue.
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 we look ahead to our very diverse future, BAJI plans to continue to be at the forefront, uniting black communities to attain racial, social, and economic justice for all.
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.
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.
We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter.
Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It’s actually happening all across the globe.
The valuation of profit over people impedes human rights across much of the world.
I have two younger brothers, and I know my parents have spoken to them about driving and interacting with police. They didn’t have those conversations with me, but they did have conversations about being exceptional black people.
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?’
Implicit bias – our subconscious associations of race – permeates everything that we do. And we must pursue systemic accountability to fix it.
Black Lives Matter has been viral, and people are taking it, appropriating it, and using it however they see fit.
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.
African-Americans and black immigrants share a resilience and a determination for a better life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Get involved in your neighborhood. That’s how I got really, really committed to the immigrant rights movement.
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.
I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don’t live and we don’t fight for one specific struggle.
African-Americans and black immigrants share a resilience and a determination for a better life.
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.
Knowing that there is a community of people on every corner of this planet that believes in justice, that is willing to sacrifice, and that is willing to take a stand is the most heartening thing.
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.
Get involved in your neighborhood. That’s how I got really, really committed to the immigrant rights movement.
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