I think what's so powerful about Black Lives Matter is we're the first movement able to take on law enforcement and make it a popular discussion.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of fostering thriving communities rather than allowing them to suffer and decline. It highlights that asking transformative questions is a crucial step toward meaningful change.
Patrisse Cullors' quote challenges us to envision what it would mean to create urban, state, or national environments that prioritize the well-being and empowerment of communities. This perspective encourages a shift away from systems that contribute to hardship and destruction, urging individuals to consider how they can actively engage in the abolitionist movement by questioning existing frameworks and advocating for a more just and nurturing society.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a community meeting focused on urban development.
More from Patrisse Cullors
All quotes →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.
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.
The black radical agenda, which pushes us closer to freedom and the agenda to which I subscribe, calls for an eradication of white supremacy and an adoption of values and traditions endowed from the black experience.
We keep calling for accountability and reinvestment and a push for all of us to imagine a world where black people are not policed but instead supported and loved and cared for. Where our families can feel safe and inspired and protected.
Myself and the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, but in truth, we are loving women whose life experiences have led us to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful.
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At long last, the battle has ended! And thus, Ghana, your beloved country is free forever!
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Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.