We should be uncomfortable with the growing gaps in our society, and we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to these injustices.
Interpretation
We must not ignore the increasing inequalities in society and should remain sensitive to injustices.
Ayanna Pressley's quote urges individuals to recognize and be disturbed by the widening disparities in society. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining awareness and empathy towards injustices, encouraging active engagement rather than complacency.
In practice
In a speech about social reform, I could quote Pressley to emphasize the need for active engagement in fighting inequality.
I'm not naive. All politics is about identity, right? Neighborhood politics, cultural politics, issue politics. It's not as though I don't get that. It's just - it has to be, I think, tempered in a way that is for our overall advancement and not to our detriment or obliteration. When I say 'our,' I don't mean just communities of color.
We desperately need comprehensive immigration reform in this nation, and yes, comprehensive immigration reform proposals are nuanced and complicated, but you know what shouldn't be? Our capacity to see each other's humanity.
You cannot have a government for and by the people if it is not represented by all of the people.
Raising me as a single parent, my mother held many jobs. Most of them had to do with the betterment and the advancement of our community and society at large. I grew up seeing her active in ministries at our church, with the homeless, as a social worker, with elderly, with youth, as a children's rights organizer with the Urban League of Chicago.
As I have always said, those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.
At the women's march, we held signs that said, 'Today we march, tomorrow we run.' They didn't believe us, but it's coming to pass.
Racism has its boot squarely wedged on the neck of black communities, and we don't want to be told that hard work and responsibility are the answer.
For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.
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.
If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods, it's not for a lack of resources. It will be a lack of something else.
There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions - not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.
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.
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