“I was moved by the Women's Marches around the country (and world). And I was glad to hear that they were all "peaceful" and there were no arrests.

You know why there were no arrests? Because PR-wise, it was a march that would be attended by mostly white women. And in a world that doesn't protect women much, when it chooses to, it is white women it protects. If the marches were mostly Black and brown women, police would be emboldened to break them up, throw tear gas into the crowds, and be physical. How do we know? The BLM protests and marches, where the only things people had were their bodies and those were considered weapons. Ferguson. Baltimore. Chicago. Militarized police always showed up. LOOK AT STANDING ROCK.

White women and white bodies can hold space on streets and shut down cities "peacefully" because they are allowed to. Black and brown people who march are assaulted by cops, and in Trump's law and order administration, this will only get worse.

Remember that you as a white person are walking in a body of privilege. You didn't show up before but you can show up now. NOW. When the next Sandra Bland, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Rekia Boyd, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner etc etc etc happens, you better come out. We will need you to show up again and again, in these numbers.”

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.