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1. Civility is the recognition that all people have dignity that’s inherent to their person, no matter their religion, race, gender, sexuality, or ability.
2. We deserve a multiracial democracy that works for all of us.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. If black lives mattered, I believe that policing and immigration enforcement would not be the devastating force that it is in our communities.
10. We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America.
11. I often think of Audre Lorde and her saying that we don’t live and we don’t fight for one specific struggle.
12. We know that there are people in our nation, black people, who are systematically being disenfranchised in a number of spheres in our lives.
13. My parents migrated to Phoenix, AZ, in the ’80s, and I watched them work tirelessly to provide for me and my siblings as they encouraged us to pursue our dreams.
14. My parents being from Nigeria deeply informs all my social justice and human rights work.
15. 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.
16. Black Lives Matter has been viral, and people are taking it, appropriating it, and using it however they see fit.
17. We created #BlackLivesMatter. We created a platform. We used our social media presence online in order to forward a conversation about what is taking place in black communities.
18. Only when the oppressed are heard can we have an honest solutions based dialogue.
19. 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.
20. Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It’s actually happening all across the globe.