We don't have time to waste. Our communities are crumbling; our children are under siege. Failing schools and a for-profit prison-industrial complex are sucking the life out of black homes and communities. We are not going down like this!
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the urgent need for community action and awareness regarding societal issues affecting black communities.
Susan L. Taylor articulates a powerful call to action against the deteriorating conditions in black communities. She highlights critical issues such as the failing education system and the exploitative prison-industrial complex, underscoring the urgency for collective efforts to combat these challenges. Taylor’s assertion that 'we are not going down like this' conveys resilience and a refusal to accept defeat in the face of systemic oppression.
In practice
This quote could be used in a community meeting to inspire local leaders to take action.
We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.
Everything hinges on education. Without it, you can't advocate for proper health care, for housing, for a civil rights bill that ensures your rights.
When I joined 'Essence,' I was a young, single mother. I was 24. I hadn't gone to college. I wasn't making any money at 'Essence' - what was it, $500 a month - and I was struggling. So I was always looking down the road, always hoping for a better, you know, tomorrow.
It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.
We women feel we are here to serve. That's the mistake we make. We may have children, husbands, lovers, bills, responsibility. Those things don't own us, but too often we let them.
Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.
We're criminalizing economic inability to stay out of the system. Women get penalized more than men for the same crime; blacks get penalized more than whites for the same crime. We need to bring out more into the light, because it's not fair... I applaud Colin Kaepernick for speaking out.
I have a wonderful, diverse, and young staff at the AAPF who pretty much work around the clock trying to figure out how we promote the idea that social justice requires us to be intersectional in our thinking and in our scope of vision.
We can stop being so taken aback by Black Lives Matter. If we didn't need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others.
The default of our society is the reproduction of racial inequality. I mean, that's what it does; that's what it's been doing for hundreds of years.
If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.
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