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37 #Blacklivesmatter Quotes That Remind Us That This Is Not Just A Moment But A Movement

It's time to end police brutality and racial inequality #blacklivesmatter.
Jane Drinkard
July 12, 2016
“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.”
— Jesse Williams, Bet Awards Humanitarian Award Acceptance Speech, 2016
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Equality, Justice, Injustice, America, Structure, foundation, racism
“If you have a critique for our resistance then you’d better have an established record, a critique of our oppression.”
— Jesse Williams, Bet Awards Humanitarian Award Acceptance Speech, 2016
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Equality, Justice, Injustice, America, Structure, foundation, racism
“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil -- black gold! -- ghettoizing and demeaning our creations and stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.”
— Jesse Williams, Bet Awards Humanitarian Award Acceptance Speech, 2016
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, Equality, Justice, Injustice, America, Structure, foundation, racism
“There isn’t a place in the world White Supremacy hasn’t touched.”
— Dominique Matti, Why I’m Absolutely an Angry Black Woman — THOSE PEOPLE
Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1)
“Because this? This is not justice, or peace, or progress. It reeks of death, the stench of corrupt power wielders, it reeks of silence, of institutionalized murder, of heartbreak, of irreparable damages; this feels like waterboarding, like syndicated torture for the masses.”
— Joel Leon, Black Lives Matter: A Fairy Tale
Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), Black Lives Matter, Justice, racism
“Columbia, South Carolina just fired the CAPTAIN of the Fire Department after he posted online that he was considering running over some Black Lives Matter activists if he saw them.
America. 2016.”
— Shaun King, America. 2016.
Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), Black Lives Matter, Police Brutality
“There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race. Scientifically, anthropologically, racism is a construct — a social construct. And it has benefits. Money can be made off of it, and people who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So it has a social function, racism.”
— Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison Schools Colbert On Race In America
Tagged: Black Lives Matter (C1), racism
“But the thing is, we treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down.”
— Chris Rock, In Conversation CHRIS ROCK
Tagged: racism, Black Lives Matter (C1), American Racism
“First of all, don’t ever start a sentence with, ‘If I were a black father.' If you are a black father, you don’t need to say it and if you aren’t, you should probably just shut the fuck up.”
— Seth Meyers, Seth Meyers: People Blaming Black Lives Matter for Dallas Need to ‘Shut the F*ck Up’
Tagged: blacklivesmatter, Matter, black lives, protest, guiliani, Ignorance, Change
“When people say ‘Black Lives Matter, that doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter.”
— Barack Obama, NATO Summit 2016
Tagged: blacklivesmatter, Matter, black lives, protest, Ignorance, Change
“Indeed, in America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person ten times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife. We believe white dominance to be a fact of the inert past, a delinquent debt that can be made to disappear if only we don’t look”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations
Tagged: racism, America, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, Police Brutality, Violence, Chance, Progress
“The Constitution gives you the right, as a white man, to have a rifle in your home. The Constitution gives you the right to protect yourself. Why is it ‘ominous’ when black people even talk of having rifles? Why don’t we have the right to self-defense? Is it because maybe you know we’re going to have to defend ourselves against you?”
— James Baldwin, One Day When I Was Lost
Tagged: racism, America, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, Police Brutality, Violence, Chance, Progress
“It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us,' We’re going to stand up as a community and fight against anyone who believes that murder or any violent action by those who are sworn to protect us should consistently go unpunished.”
— Beyoncé Knowles, FREEDOM
Tagged: Freedom, Black Lives Matter, black lives, protest, Action, Change, Progress, racism, USA, America
“When you know, we been hurt, been down before, nigga
When my pride was low, lookin' at the world like, 'where do we go, nigga?'
And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga
I'm at the preacher's door
My knees gettin' weak and my gun might blow but we gon' be alright”
— Kendrick Lamar, Alright - Kendrick Lamar
Tagged: Freedom, Police Brutality, black lives, Black Lives Matter, Matter, Fight
“there needs to be a concerted effort to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.”
— Hillary Clinton, Clinton: We Need To Address 'Systemic Racism' In Our Criminal Justice System
Tagged: systematic, racism, Black Lives Matter, black lives
“I wasn’t surprised about what happened in Baltimore, because of what we had seen in Ferguson.

I don’t believe in rioting and all, but I know peaceful protesters are very hard to be seen.

What I see with Baltimore, Ferguson and other mass protests is what has been given birth is the Black Lives Matter movement. My insight on that is the black lives do matter but it must matter to black people first. If it doesn’t matter to black people, why should it matter to anyone else?”
— Arthur Reed, a.k.a Silky Slim, Ex-Gang Leader Drops Bombshell Quote on 'Black Lives Matter' Movement That Everyone Should See
Tagged: Justice, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Police, shooting, ferguson, baltimore, crips
“It seems that it's either pro-cop and anti-black or pro-black and anti-cop, when, in reality, you can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we should all be. It is what we should be aiming for.”
— Trevor Noah, July 7, 2016 - Julia Stiles
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, trevor noah, Police Brutality, Police, Justice, Movement, protest
“...you can truly grieve for every officer who has been lost in the line of duty in this country and still be troubled by cases of police overreach. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them to be held to high standards.”
— John Stewart, Jon Stewart Fesses Up to 'One Factual Error' in His Police Shootings Report, Then Curses Out Fox News (Video)
Tagged: Police, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Matter, Movement, Change, Progress
“The reality is this is a peaceful human rights movement led by incredibly courageous black people. I think we are demanding justice and freedom for our people.”
— Opal Tometi, What is the message of Black Lives Matter?
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives, Justice, Freedom, human rights
“What it means is that we are all sick and tired of seeing unarmed people shot by police officers, That young people in African-American communities are harassed by police officers, where police departments are not there to be supportive but are in many cases oppressive, and that’s an issue that has to be addressed.”
— Bernie Sanders, Two Guys From Brooklyn: The Bernie Sanders Interview by Spike Lee
Tagged: Police, Black Lives Matter, black lives, Community, african-american, Movement, Election, Progress, Oppression, issues, Society
“Every member of this body — every Republican and every Democrat — wants to see less gun violence," Every member of this body wants a world in which people feel safe regardless of the color of their skin. And that’s not how people are feeling these days.”
— Paul Ryan, Speaker Ryan: Statement on the Tragedy in Dallas
Tagged: Freedom, black lives, Black Lives Matter, conservatives, Democrats, Movement
“We can’t affect national narrative, we can’t affect national legislation that comes down and affects local people if local people don’t push back and take a stand about what's happening in local communities,”
— Chelsea Fuller, Black Lives Matter: A primer on what it is and what it stands for
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, advancement project, black lives, Matter, Progress, Change, national, local, Community
“Black women, we see you. We love you. We are with you and we believe in your leadership.”
— Common, Common Pays Tribute to Diamond Reynolds at the 2016 VH1 Hip Hop Honors
Tagged: Women, Black Lives Matter, Movement, Justice, Change
“If I go outside and try to hail a cab and he passes me for the white woman standing right there, that racism is still alive and kicking. And we have to change that. And I'm not blaming the white lady, she needed a cab too.”
— Queen Latifah, Queen Latifah at the 2016 VH1 Hip Hop Honors: 'Racism Is Still Alive and Kicking'
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives, queen latifah, Injustice, America, racism
“The concept of reverse racism is flawed, if not absolutely ridiculous. Most, if not all of the negative responses from people of color toward white people, are reactions to the hatred, violence, cruelty and brutality that they were shown by white people for centuries. Much of the foundation of the modern world was built on the forced free labor of black peoples. The African Slave Trade, the institution of slavery, colonialism, its derivative systems, and the multiple holocausts throughout history, where whites used race as the defining reason to justify their oppression, conquest, and brutal treatment of non-white peoples, are how race became such a factor to begin with.”
— Lauryn Hill, Days Before Prison Bid, Lauryn Hill Gives "Racist" Rant – For The Best In Hip-Hop News - SOHH.com
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives, Movement, Progress, Inequality, Injustice, History, racism
“Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise”
— Maya Angelou, Still I Rise
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives matter movement, blacklivesmatter, black lives, rise, Progress, racism, History
“People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.”
— James Baldwin, Another Country
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklivesmatter, black lives matter movement, humanity, racism
“Taking on systemic racism—and rebuilding trust between police and citizens—will require contributions from us all.”
— Hillary ClintonVerified account
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, black lives matter movement, systematic racism
“Protest is this idea of telling the truth in public, and I’ll never be afraid to tell the truth. What I heard in the jail cell and the conversations we had is that the arrests will not stop people from telling the truth, and that people remain as committed to this work today as they were two days ago and as they were yesterday.”
— Deray Mckesson, Black Lives Matter leader DeRay Mckesson on protests and his arrest Video
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklivesmatter, black lives matter movement, Justice, Inequality, systematic racism
“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when I talked to minority youth, almost every single one of them mentions lower-level uses of force as the reason why they believe the world is corrupt.”
— Roland G. Fryer Jr., Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
Tagged: Black Lives Matter, blacklives, Research, Data, racism, Police Brutality