Opal Tometi Quotes

I want to see us push for economical and educational advancement in communities of color and low-income communities, and I want to see our relationships between our communities and our law enforcement be advanced.

How do we stop violence, looting, and riots? The way that we stop that is by making sure that people have the things that they need to thrive.

What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving rather than their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.

I met children who want to be social workers, lawyers, doctors, community activists and soldiers so they can help their people rise above still difficult economic circumstances.

When we sit and think about what the world needs to looks like in order for black lives to actually matter, there is a debate: What is going to make our communities safe? How do we deal with harm? How do we solve problems that come up in our communities?

Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good.

Integration in the fields of education, housing, transportation and public accommodations will be of limited extent and duration so long as fundamental economic inequality along racial lines persist.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

Communities do need police, but law enforcement needs to be much more transparent and held accountable for their actions. We also need increased resources for mental health services, affordable housing, education, jobs training, and much more to truly address social and economic issues in our communities.

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?

We've got to create strategies of our own that ensure that our kids are going to get an education they need, that people are getting connected to skills and that we do more to draw investment into the city of Flint.

President Obama started in public life not as an elected official but as a community organizer. He worked with churches and other groups on the south side of Chicago to push public leaders to fight poverty, improve the local school system and make housing more affordable, and to bring about the change the community needed and deserved.

I don't agree with the Black Lives Matter organizers. They are stated as anti-capitalists. And it's much more than just the police to them. It's about changing society entirely.

I'm asking for the vote of every single African-American citizen. You're living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs.

If you look at my career over the past twenty years, I've always been trying to look around corners for low-income communities of color.

Finally I got to the point where I said, I'd like to start a project where we can actually talk about race and poverty, not through the lens of a particular case, but much more broadly.

The American people understand that we need real change in this country, in my view, a political revolution, which says to the people on top, "You know what, you guys can't have it all."

We have to invest in our kids, we have to invest in our communities, we have to create jobs. We have to make certain that kids are not dropping out of school and hanging out on street corners.

What we are working for is an educational program that has become a resource and rallying point for scores of brave southerners who are leading the fight for justice and better race relations in these crucial days

I think if you do have democracy it would transform the world because if the millions of people who die live on a dollar a day, had the vote, they would redistribute the wealth of the world, and the people at the top are not prepared to see that happen.

Hillary Clinton's been talking about the inner cities for 25 years. Nothing's going to ever happen.

The only real struggle in the history of the world ... is between the vested interest and social justice.

People don't need to become more aware of poverty - they need to know how to end it.

For us going forward, it's to not reverse the dynamism of American society and the diversity. It's to pay attention to the people who are being ruined by it, and so this doesn't happen again.