Quotes from Opal Tometi

If people take the fight for justice seriously in their own country and with partners and immigrants in their community and folks in the international community, I believe that we will see human rights for all people affirmed.

Without networks like the Black Immigration Network, organizations like Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees would not get the support and resources and amplification that their voices that they need and deserve.

In my own personal experience, I've had different family members who have been held in immigration detention because they've had some sort of challenge financially, and they were making difficult decisions, and that led to their immigration detention and, eventually, deportation.

The reality is that anti-black racism is a global phenomenon, and it looks different in each context, but if you look at the outcomes, if you listen and look at the experiences, you will see that it's clear, and it's happening across the globe.

Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.

As we look ahead to our very diverse future, BAJI plans to continue to be at the forefront, uniting black communities to attain racial, social, and economic justice for all.

Racism should be a core concern for all Americans in every area of our lives.

Implicit bias - our subconscious associations of race - permeates everything that we do. And we must pursue systemic accountability to fix it.

Far from ending, systemic racism reinvents itself to conform to what is publically acceptable, leaving the quality of black life diminished and more permanently fixed with each passing decade.

Anti-black racism operates at a society-wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices, and beliefs to oppress and disempower black communities.

There was a time when my uncle was in an immigration detention center, and members of our community would take turns visiting him each weekend. That instilled in me the value of taking care of each other even if the systems aren't working in your favor.

I'm really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing.

If black lives mattered, I believe that policing and immigration enforcement would not be the devastating force that it is in our communities.

Knowing that there is a community of people on every corner of this planet that believes in justice, that is willing to sacrifice, and that is willing to take a stand is the most heartening thing.

We created #BlackLivesMatter. We created a platform. We used our social media presence online in order to forward a conversation about what is taking place in black communities.

President Trump is mentally incapable of imagining the humanity of anyone who looks different from him or hails from a different nation.

Black people, we are fully deserving of the room and space to fully express our humanity. This is what Black Lives Matter is truly about.

I was in awe of previous black liberation struggle leaders - Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. Black Lives Matter has been that.

We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America.

The valuation of profit over people impedes human rights across much of the world.

As a community organizer who holds a degree in history, I understand the fascination with history. However, there is a tendency for many of us to get engrossed in the recounting of our history, which often amounts to purely intellectual activity without material action.

Due to broken windows policing, the following interactions can lead to tickets, arrests and summonses, warrants if tickets go unpaid and, in some cases, violence: jaywalking, sleeping on a park bench, spitting, putting your feet up on the subway, and more.

What we are oftentimes reminding people of is the fact that the history of police in the U.S. was that they were slave patrols. They were quite literally created in order to capture enslaved Africans.

Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It's actually happening all across the globe.