One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “Don’t let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.
Like it or not, most people prioritize their own safety over the education of someone else’s child. I wanted to make them see that if we didn’t prioritize education now, it would be a public safety matter later.
You don’t add the intractable problems to the list because they are new, but because they are big, because people have been fighting against them for dozens – maybe even hundreds – of years, and that duty is now yours. What matters is how well you run the portion of the race that is yours.
What I want young women and girls to know is: You are powerful and your voice matters. You’re going to walk into many rooms in your life and career where you may be the only one who looks like you or who has had the experiences you’ve had. But you remember that when you are in those rooms, you are not alone. We are all in that room with you applauding you on. Cheering your voice. And just so proud of you. So you use that voice and be strong.
Drawing on the words of Coretta Scott King, I reminded the audience that freedom must be fought for and won by every generation. “It is the very nature of this fight for civil rights and justice and equality that whatever gains we make, they will not be permanent. So we must be vigilant, ” I said.
But when you can’t sleep at night, how can you dream?
When you break through a glass ceiling, you’re going to get cut, and it’s going to hurt.
The criminal justice system punishes people for their poverty.
Black men use drugs at the same rate as white men, but they are arrested twice as often for it. And then they pay more than a third more than their counterparts, on average, in bail. Black men are six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated. And when they are convicted, black men get sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those given to their white counterparts. Latino men don’t fare much better. It is truly appalling.
The job of an elected official is not to sing a lullaby and soothe the country into a sense of complacency. The job is to speak truth, even in a moment that does not welcome or invite its utterance.
You have to sweat the small stuff, because sometimes it turns out the small stuff is actually the big stuff.
When you show people the math, you give them the tools to decide whether they agree with the solution. And even if they don’t agree with everything, they may find that they agree with you most of the way – a kind of policy-making “partial credit” that can form the basis for constructive collaboration.
Nothing makes a child feel more secure than being tucked in by a parent at the end of a day, getting a kiss and a hug, a good-night story, falling asleep to the sound of their voice. Nothing is more important to a parent than talking with their child at night before the child goes to sleep, answering their questions, comforting and reassuring them in the face of any fears, making sure they know that everything will be okay. Parents and children everywhere relate to these rituals.
God, a God who asked us to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” and to “defend the rights of the poor and needy.” This is where I learned that “faith” is.
It is often the mastery of the seemingly unimportant details, the careful execution of the tedious tasks, and the dedicated work done outside of the public eye that make the changes we seek possible.
Local officials don’t have the ability to make national policy. They have no authority beyond their jurisdiction. But when they land on good ideas, even on a small scale, they can create examples that others can replicate.
Our unity is our strength, and our diversity is our power. We reject the myth of “us” vs. “them.” We are in this together.
Communities – and in particular the black community – have been shouting and crying, mothers over their dead children’s bodies, been crying in deep pain about these things. But people turned a blind eye or they didn’t believe it or they didn’t want to believe it. But now, because of the smartphone, America and the world are seeing in vivid detail the brutality that communities have known for generations.
We have to act with fierce urgency. Justice demands it.
I’ve learned, through history and experience, that not all progress is gradual or linear. Sometimes it simply goes from one plateau to another. Sometimes we fall back tragically. Sometimes we leap forward and achieve things beyond the realm of what we thought possible. I believe that our job is to provide the force propulsion that will get us to a higher plane.