Opal Tometi Quotes

The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.

Obviously, I have certain policy positions that I push and advocate for that would benefit people dealing in a system that breeds inequality and makes life more difficult for people.

Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game anymore that there isn't poverty and inequality in this country. The Millions More Movement - Katrina gives it added significance.

Power, privilege, and violence are not, and never were, strictly Southern issues in America.

I've always thought that there are many things still left in society that are detached from the sense of ordinary people. I won't overlook them and I will determine what is right before taking bold action.

What is it going to take to dismantle the systems that keep me from being able to live well and that keep me and so many other people from being able to access the things that we need and deserve?

Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

Part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it, and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

I think people have to recognise that the traditional modes of authority weren't that great.

You know, people'd always ask 'Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?' They never seen the house I'm running from.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

The real threat to the democracy is the half a nation in poverty.

The working class is very under-represented in politics, literature, and everywhere else.

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice done to three fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all the blacks.... Nine of every ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even State affairs as the negroes had.

Poor people are too stupid to know they're just chess pieces in a game.

You discover that the education the Negro gets is designed to keep him subservient. The poor black man is exploited by whites and by educated Negroes, too.

I think that because human difference for so long, in all its various forms, has been the root of so much oppression, sometimes there's the impulse to say let's deny the difference, as though by wishing away the difference we can then wish away the oppression.

Once working people discover that, collectively, we have more power than we do as individual silos, then we become an incredibly powerful force. But I think that there are powers that be that are invested in us remaining divided along racial lines, along economic lines.

What hit me in the gut about hip-hop was that someone else grew up tough enough to be angry at the entire system.

Partly, identity politics is a result of economic failure.

Only when the oppressed are heard can we have an honest solutions based dialogue.