As you keep pulling back the layers of how deeply rooted anti-blackness and white supremacy are in this country, it is exhausting, and it is traumatizing.
It's actually OK to be unique and have your own contributions, to celebrate what it means to be black, how we've survived and thrived through the worst conditions possible.
It took me a long time to figure out that I didn't have to do everything, that it was actually a lot more helpful if I did a couple things really, really well than a whole bunch of things really badly, or nothing at all, because the whole thing was overwhelming.
I'll be honest with you: I think that it's really difficult, this framing around 'good cops' and 'bad cops.' Policing, as a system, is incredibly corrupt, period.
I grew up in Marin County, which is a wealthy suburb of San Francisco.
It's hard to be a leader when you have to make hard choices and when you have to do what's right, even though people are not going to like you for it.
Protest is best used when it's part of a strategy that involves escalating tactics that build pressure on targets.
Black Trans Lives Matter, to me, is really different. I think it speaks most directly to the marginalization and disenfranchisement of trans people within the black community.
I'll be honest with you, I really struggle with the conversation around gun control.
What is it going to take to dismantle the systems that keep me from being able to live well and that keep me and so many other people from being able to access the things that we need and deserve?
When people say, 'Well, I don't talk to my family because they're all conservatives,' or 'I don't talk to my family because they're racist,' I'm, like, 'No, no, no; that's exactly who you need to be talking to.'
There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.
My definition of feminism is a social, political, economic system by which all genders are valued, respected, and can live dignified lives.
My mom has this thing where she doesn't sugarcoat stuff.
I'm in favor of people getting in where they fit in. Wherever you feel you can make the greatest contribution, you should.
We want to see a world where black lives matter in order for us to get to a world where all of our humanity is respected.
'Socialism' became this weird household word partially because right-wingers call Obama a socialist, which he is the farthest from.
The biggest misconception about Black Lives Matter is that BLM is just one entity; Black Lives Matter is an organization and a network. We are a part of the movement, but we are not the movement.
I think that there is an element where leadership is lonely, but I also believe that it doesn't have to be like that.
I think that we are all deeply, deeply committed to the liberation of black people. And so, when you put people together who have and share that commitment, the sky is the limit.
