Opal Tometi Quotes
Our communities are reeling from poverty, from unemployment, from discrimination of all sorts and different interactions that they're having with the law enforcement, and education system, and so on.
Birdsong, Mia. "An Interview with the Founders of Black Lives Matter." TED, Oct. 2016.
Instead of standing and saluting as professional athletes have done for decades before games, he kneeled and refused to stand. This caused great public criticism but also some initial support. He was potentially risking his multimillion dollar salary as this technically violated his contract to avoid anything embarrassing to the team. He also donated $1 million to programs in the area that were working to enhance Black/white understanding. Even those who disagreed with his choice of protest defended his right to do so, and after the initial furor, public opinion, while not in agreement about his method, tended to support him for having the courage of his convictions and using his celebrity for a worthy cause. After sensing the public opinion, his team matches his $1 donation. Professional athletes both in the NFL and in other sports then began to do the same as a form of protest for the large, disproportionate, number of black men who were killed, mostly when unarmed, by police. The reference to the “paid leave” was the practice followed by most police departments—usually required by collective bargaining agreements with police unions—of placing police officers accused of committing violations of laws or regulations on paid administrative leave while all the investigations, hearings, and other processes . While this practice protected the rights of those police officers who were not guilty, it ended up paying brutal murders for a some time entire their case was decided or acted upon be the district attorney.
In most urban police departments there is a disparate proportion of police in the wealthy and business districts as compared with the poorer areas of the city.
The vast majority of the million Blacks in prison have been sentenced for using or selling drugs.
Very often viciousness and prejudice curtails opportunity and openness to possiblilities an can exacerbate economic dislocation.
This was written in 1933 one of the worst years of the Great Depression. Actualy many upper middle calss and rich people were ruined themselves by the Great Depression, but at the same time the ultra rich were living in a "gildd age" and reveled ostentatiously.
Opal Tometi is an American human rights activist, writer, strategist, and community organizer. She is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter (BLM). She is the former Executive Director of the United States’ first national immigrant rights organization for people of African descent, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI).
