Michelle Alexander Quotes

Thank you for the opportunity for the Democratic Party and progressives to reclaim the votes of the sane citizens of these United States.

I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.

We want to get people of color out to vote, because their vote matters. Every politician tries to capture it. But it's More Than a Vote because we want to come up with what's our ask, and hold these politicians' feet to the fire to make real change.

Coming out of the 2016 election, there was a few things that became really clear. One, that black people deserve to have vehicles that represent the breadth of our interests. Two, that we really need to do a better job of being able to communicate what conditions and experiences our communities are facing.

I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.

All of the candidates agree that the Democratic Party needs to undergo fundamental reforms.

If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation.

Political action alone will not suffice. A new political party cannot win by conventional means. A new political party can win if it serves its proper function as the political arm of a complete patriotic resistance movement.

I think in order to achieve real change, we as the black community need to come up with real asks and we have to determine, what do we actually want? We obviously want some social reform, on police brutality and things like that. We also need political changes. But it's more than voting. What are we as black people asking of these politicians?

The Democratic Party has become the party of Bernie Sanders, I mean they are the progressives. That's who control.

Unlike mainstream civil rights groups, which merely sought integration of blacks into the existing order, SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself.

We really are going to have to answer the cries of everyday women and men who are calling out for elected leaders to do something different. They want to be treated fairly and they need a political party who represents them.

The midterms are a chance for people to vote out those they believe are failing to address the concerns of citizens.

I brought attention to the fact that people need to be more involved in politics and not just let the establishment continue to control politics.

The Democratic Party has to transform itself. We can't just pop up every two or four years and hope people will support us.

I'm doing what Democrats said we needed to coming out of 2016, after that sobering defeat, which is to build a bench, to usher fresh faces and new voices and new ideas.

No civil rights movement has gotten anywhere without the help of white liberals.

We are clear that all lives matter, but we live in a world where that's not actually happening in practice. So if we want to get to the place where all lives matter, then we have to make sure that black lives matter, too.

In order to change Washington, we're going to have to change the people that we send there.

We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter.

Over the years, Democrats have had a lot of very talented individuals, but they have lacked fighters.

Whether or not you call it Black Lives Matter, whether or not you put a hashtag in front of it, whether or not you call it the Movement for Black Lives, all of that is irrelevant. Because there was resistance before Black Lives Matter, and there will be resistance after Black Lives Matter.

These days many politicians are demanding change. Just like homeless people.

We can't just assume that this resistance is going to produce the kinds of candidates or the kinds of parties that will truly honor people of all colors, all backgrounds, all ethnicities, from every nation and every faith and every gender, unless we do the work in our own communities of organizing and being in deep dialogue with one another across all forms of difference. It's my hope that we'll seize this opportunity and not let the moment pass.

Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.