HAPPENING NOW:
"Race lies at so much of the core of what is problematic in our society today...because we have not had the courage...to decide that this is your job as a citizen to deal with the fractures that ultimately if we don’t confront them will destroy us." --@Sifill_LDF
"And to see someone’s life being taken from them with that kind of excruciating deliberation, the officer looking out at us like that...One of the reasons why the George Floyd video set us off so much is that we’ve seen the videos...He wasn’t trying to hide what he was doing."
"That’s why the other officers are so important because we will hear once again about how this is about a bad apple...and it’s not about a bad apple, it’s about a system of actors and those who are complicit with those actors." --@Sifill_LDF
"There are moments in this country when there are photographs that are snapshots of the soul of this country...we see this picture of the nonchalance with which America will put its knee on the neck of Black people and make itself deaf to our suffering...that’s the snapshot."
"It was among the most appalling displays of power I have ever seen...and really constituted a moment of tremendous debasement for this democracy. The president wanted to show...his version of strength, which is tear-gassing peaceful protesters outside the White House."
"We call them strong men because that’s their goal, is to appear strong, but actually there is so much more strength in the willingness to lead a true democracy. You are strong because you can hear dissent..."--@Sifill_LDF
"Part of what has been so alarming is not Mr. Trump himself, but the amount of people who have been willing to go along with things that we would have regarded as beyond the pale, and who have been willing to be part of this unraveling of our democracy." --@Sifill_LDF
"What we have seen now is how fragile a democracy is. It requires work. It requires people to be vigilant. It requires people saying no to a leader who’s out of control."
"Responding to protests that emanate from anger about the excessive use of force with an excessive use of force strikes me as not a good strategy for law and order."
"It can be happening because we haven't dealt with this, so we’ll constantly feel like we’re being thrown back in time. When you saw those men in a truck chasing Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia...that looked like something from another century."
"When we peacefully protest we’re called ungrateful, we're called unpatriotic, when in fact, to do the work of trying to make this country better is the highest form of patriotism."
"I don’t know of anything in the history of Black people in this country in which I’ve read some account in which it ended with, “and then they gave up.” That’s just not what we do. I know we work for the future of our children and our grandchildren and their children."
