Tom Perez Quotes

If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu.

If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

I'm trying to appeal to the disenfranchised everybody, not just specifically gay.

It matters whether women sit at the table. No one speaks up for you when you are standing outside with your nose pressed up against the glass. You cannot window-shop for power.

You must make sure that the majority of the people are not marginalized.

I have always felt my role was to do anything I could to enable the powerless to speak. I want America to hear these voices because they are beautiful voices.

Our party has always been the voice of the powerless and the voiceless.

Let's continue to stand up for those who are vulnerable to being left out or marginalized.

This is an important appointment to a community that has often felt excluded from the decision making process.

Those of us with power must learn to listen more and talk less; those without power must learn to talk more an listen less.

f you don't have a seat at the table, then bring a folding chair.

As I have always said, those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.

If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu.

Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying "Enough!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable - this is Marcos.

Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

I want to be a champion for the people I have fought for all my life - regular people.

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

I do not want to be president because I am a woman. Being a woman is important, but it's not the most important. I want to be president because we have the talent and the platform and the vision of a Mexico that we want for all Mexicans, not only for a select few.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

I don't have one role that I want to play. I guess... I want to be a producer. I want to be an activist. I want to be proactive in bringing about work for men, women, boys, girls, everybody who is good at what they do and deserve a shot at it.

I want to be the voice of the people; black, white, everyday, oppressed people. A person trying to make it and to do it right.