"My commitment never ceases or runs dry even against odds because my liberation and my people's liberation depends on it, and in Assata Shakur's words - it is our duty to fight for our freedom, we have nothing to lose but our chains." - Niki Franco
Black Excellence Month
“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.” - Maya Angelou
Black History Month
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
― Angela Davis
Name Update: Accountable Allyship
“If you’re not actively listening, learning from, and implementing the strategies that black and brown folks give, you’re not anti-racist.” - Ally Henny
Advocate for Cyntoia Brown
"Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television….then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Renewed Commitment: Me & White Supremacy
“You can’t see yourself as perpetuating white supremacy because you have been conditioned to believe that the way you see the world is the way that everyone else sees the world too. But that just isn’t true. White supremacy centers and serves whiteness, while de-centering and oppressing people of colour (POC). You as a white person are seen as normal, and non-white people are seen as ‘other’. “ - Layla Saad
Colonization and Thanksgiving
“In many historical texts, colonization is referred to as a settling, but it is nothing of the sort. Colonization is deeply unsettling. It disrupts the cultural identity and sense of belonging of those being colonized. It then attempts to separate them from their core values and beliefs, to break them to the will of the colonizer. Then it forcibly imposes its own values and ideologies onto those being colonized.” - Sherri Mitchell Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset
Microaggressions
“There is nothing glamorous about being subjected to racism, and certainly no social rewards to be reaped from being the victim of oppression in a society that heaps disadvantage on historically marginalized groups. So why would people willingly designate themselves as victims if they do not truly feel that way? The only people who benefit from oppression are the ones who are exempt from it—not the ones who suffer through it.” - Simba Runyowa
Review The Basics
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel
White Fragility
“People are realizing and shouting and marching and demanding. They’re not forgetting. I think that’s the most important part.” - Angie Thomas
Representation Matters
“Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free.”
― Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to U.S. Congress
Systemic Racism
“I tell my students all the time, when you learn something, you have to teach someone else what you learn — you have to always pay it forward because that’s what’s going to propel this world to evolve.” - Famatta Massalay
White Privilege
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
― Ida B. Wells-Barnett