Quotes from Ayanna Pressley

We need a permanent solution to TPS recipients and develop a path to citizenship. And, more fundamentally, we need to ensure that our immigration policies treat those coming to this country with the dignity and compassion that should be afforded to all human beings and immediately stop tearing families apart.

In tech communities, we consider disruption the way to lead to innovation.

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.

I understand and appreciate and respect that any time a barrier is broken or history is made, people want to celebrate it and mark it as progress.

Players who take a knee during the national anthem do so to protest injustice across the country - fulfilling a patriotic duty to never accept injustice, but to call it out when we see it.

Public service and community organizing and movement building is such a part of my DNA that it's really hard to separate it.

My mother lost her job, so I left school to work full-time to support her.

Thanks to my mother's sacrifices, I was able to attend one of the best schools in Chicago.

I'm an only child. My mother was raising me alone. We couldn't afford child care; child care hours didn't work according to her schedule.

I have been really furious about the constant charges being lobbed against me about identity politics that, by the way, are only lobbed against women and candidates of color.

As I have always said, those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.

Not everyone is granted the opportunity that each of us deserves: to fulfill our God-given potential.

I've not been a decisively re-elected city councilor and top vote-getter three times because I haven't done the work and because I don't work hard.

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.

I will sit at the table and compromise with anyone in the name of progress, but there are things I'm not willing to compromise and negotiate on, and that is the rights of women, of immigrants, of workers, and of the LGBTQIA community.

One of my priorities is criminal justice reform, and there is certainly bipartisan appetite for that. I think we need to eliminate the cash bail system. We need to eliminate mandatory minimums. We need sentencing reform. I think we need parole reform as well.

I would not invest in a Trump hate wall. We don't need to be protected from immigrants that are coming here seeking asylum and refuge.

I happen to be black and a woman and unapologetically proud to be both, but that is not the totality of my identity.

When I was ready to buy my first home after years of renting, I immediately zeroed in on Dorchester.

An increase in bicycle ridership brings an increased need for measures to ensure the safety of cyclists.

Just as every animal is part of a kingdom, phylum, class, and order, every Dorchester resident has a parish, school, park, and neighborhood that they identify with.

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.

My life as an advocate for those most in need is inspired by my mother's example. She believed in the potential inherent in each of us, and that belief is the foundation of my work.

If elected, I will work with federal leaders to rehouse the non-immigration enforcement functions of ICE - including human trafficking and money laundering investigations - elsewhere in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security while immediately eliminating funding for enforcement and removal functions.