Opal Tometi Quotes

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.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

I have been inspired by Martin Luther King and how he inspired a movement. I have learned that a cause must be organic; if it is to have an impact it must belong to those who join the movement and not those who lead it.

When we empower our communities, we are all better off.

As a white woman with a privileged education, I'm keenly aware that I founded an organization that can only realize its goal if it enlists many more leaders who share the backgrounds of the students and families we work with.

I always saw my role as getting LGBT to support the immigrant rights movement - which they did - and getting Latino organizations to support the women's movement, for reproductive rights. So that's kind of the work that I've always been doing.

We, as communities that are marginalized, need to open up our minds and realize that we should be asking and advocating for more of everyone. Let's get more gay black men; let's get more trans women.

We want to let people know that we can build solidarity with suffering folks so that they are not excluded, they are integrated.

I'm marching for women; I'm marching for the LGBT community. I'm marching for immigrants. I happen to fall into all three categories, so I'm marching for myself at the end of the day and for my family and my friends. And for whoever else deserves it.

I founded the 'me too' movement in 2006 because I wanted to find a way to connect with the black and brown girls in the program I ran.

I take the time to show up for people in my field who are often not seen and heard in the same capacity as I am. Applauding other women and queer writers of color enables me to recognize and showcase the abundance of talent and work being created.

When I talk, it shouldn't just be black girls listening.

'The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman' is a reminder that people across the world are rebelling against norms and forging new paths for the most marginalized people in their own communities.

We don't care who you is - Blood, Crip, Mexican, Chinese. You feel me? If you about doing something positive with yourself and your community, let's join forces together.

Alleviating suffering of the most marginalized communities must begin with assessing the needs of entire communities and allowing the most marginalized to lead the strategy. My belief is those closest to the pain are closest to the solution.

A highly visible, shared identity can help bring activists from different backgrounds together with a common sense of purpose and push for change more effectively - from the global stage to within their own communities and families.

It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Today, I see thousands of Mahatma Gandhis, Martin Luther Kings, and Nelson Mandelas marching forward and calling on us. The boys and girls have joined. I have joined in. We ask you to join, too.

In any human-rights campaign, everybody must do what they can.

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.

I think part of the problem with charity is that it tends to make us view people as helpless victims. I think in the future, we'll look back on charity in the same way that we look back on colonialism today: as a very paternalistic system that doesn't fully recognise the full spectrum of humanity.

America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

The Fairness Project is endeavoring to try to do what we can to make a fairer society.

If we say we believe in equality for all then we must fight for equality for all, not betray our immigrant sisters.

It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.