AYANNA PRESSLEY

My priority will remain supporting those courageous individuals and organizations, among both Israelis and Palestinians, committed to bringing peaceful coexistence to the region.

Bad influences and distractions were around every corner. But I also learned that my neighborhood could be a nurturing, positive place to grow up.

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

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.

People entrust me with the responsibility of actualizing our shared values and, that said, I'm not in the business of going to try to convert people and getting their buy-in. I just do the work.

We want Boston to be the safest bicycling city.

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.

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.

People close to me personally, politically, have expressed frustration that I'm not the political animal that they wish that I were.

You cannot have a government for and by the people if it is not represented by all of the people.

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.

For me, whatever vantage point that I'm serving, I'm going to be an advocate and do the work to actualize my values.

If the power was equitable, then our boards, then our commissions, our contracting, our wealth-building opportunities would all look very different.

I'm very confident about my ability to earn votes in every neighborhood.

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.

We should be uncomfortable with the growing gaps in our society, and we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to these injustices.

I never thought I had the monopoly on struggle or suffering.

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'm an only child, so I don't come from a big family. But it has been my observation from friends who do come from big families that usually, when you have a family fight, on the back end you come out better and stronger for it.

At some point or another, everyone has felt unseen and unheard and marginalized.

There's many law changes, policy changes I can point to. But a lot of my work has also been to name the issue that no one else named - to spotlight it, to advocate for it. That's where all advocacy begins. I've asked different questions. I've raised different issues.

From drug companies to health insurers to Wall Street banks, big corporations are spending millions to buy influence in Washington and drown out the voices of regular people.

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

I've always had a love affair with Boston.

I think culture is a very challenging thing to reverse.