For me, whatever vantage point that I'm serving, I'm going to be an advocate and do the work to actualize my values.
— Ayanna Pressley
When I was ready to buy my first home after years of renting, I immediately zeroed in on Dorchester.
In tech communities, we consider disruption the way to lead to innovation.
Neighborhood restaurants matter.
One of my priorities is criminal justice reform, and there is certainly bipartisan appetite for that. I think we need to eliminate the cash bail system. We need to eliminate mandatory minimums. We need sentencing reform. I think we need parole reform as well.
I have been a policymaker proven in tackling some very complex social issues on the municipal level here in Boston.
Raising me as a single parent, my mother held many jobs. Most of them had to do with the betterment and the advancement of our community and society at large. I grew up seeing her active in ministries at our church, with the homeless, as a social worker, with elderly, with youth, as a children's rights organizer with the Urban League of Chicago.
I'm asking people to vote for me because I'm an activist leader and a problem solver.
My mother lost her job, so I left school to work full-time to support her.
I'm an only child, so I don't come from a big family. But it has been my observation from friends who do come from big families that usually, when you have a family fight, on the back end you come out better and stronger for it.
At the women's march, we held signs that said, 'Today we march, tomorrow we run.' They didn't believe us, but it's coming to pass.
I'm an only child. My mother was raising me alone. We couldn't afford child care; child care hours didn't work according to her schedule.
When I hear 'politics,' I hear 'relationships.'
An increase in bicycle ridership brings an increased need for measures to ensure the safety of cyclists.
When I was growing up, 'Ebony Magazine' was a must read in our household. In those pages I found our news, our stories, and my pride.
We should be uncomfortable with the growing gaps in our society, and we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to these injustices.
Bad influences and distractions were around every corner. But I also learned that my neighborhood could be a nurturing, positive place to grow up.
I know, given my own life challenges, that there are many non-academic barriers that get in the way of the scholastic and life success of our children and that complicate teaching.
I don't have stars in my eyes. I'm not personally ambitious. I'm very aspirational.
I'm doing what Democrats said we needed to coming out of 2016, after that sobering defeat, which is to build a bench, to usher fresh faces and new voices and new ideas.
People close to me personally, politically, have expressed frustration that I'm not the political animal that they wish that I were.
I would not invest in a Trump hate wall. We don't need to be protected from immigrants that are coming here seeking asylum and refuge.
I went to a school with the kids of judges and elected officials and architects, civil leaders, and influencers. And I felt very much a minority in every way. But it did expose me to incredible things.
Public service and community organizing and movement building is such a part of my DNA that it's really hard to separate it.
I am black and a woman and unapologetically proud to be both. But I've never asked anyone to vote for me because I'm black and a woman.
Thanks to my mother's sacrifices, I was able to attend one of the best schools in Chicago.
I think culture is a very challenging thing to reverse.
I've not been a decisively re-elected city councilor and top vote-getter three times because I haven't done the work and because I don't work hard.
I am probably an outsider because I challenge conventional narratives about who should have a seat at the table.
I'm not naive. All politics is about identity, right? Neighborhood politics, cultural politics, issue politics. It's not as though I don't get that. It's just - it has to be, I think, tempered in a way that is for our overall advancement and not to our detriment or obliteration. When I say 'our,' I don't mean just communities of color.
We want Boston to be the safest bicycling city.
As I have always said, those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.
Players who take a knee during the national anthem do so to protest injustice across the country - fulfilling a patriotic duty to never accept injustice, but to call it out when we see it.
If the power was equitable, then our boards, then our commissions, our contracting, our wealth-building opportunities would all look very different.
Just as every animal is part of a kingdom, phylum, class, and order, every Dorchester resident has a parish, school, park, and neighborhood that they identify with.
I don't put too much stock in polls.
There's something to be said for perseverance.
Listening is something as elected officials, as leaders, we forget to do.
If you look at the Affordable Care Act, ultimately that was saved not solely by lawmakers but because of the courage of individuals and families who went to Washington, who organized, who mobilized and said 'We're not turning around.'
I don't think people that make history set out to make it.
My mother did not raise me to ask for permission to lead.
Our schools should be rewarding for all students.
At some point or another, everyone has felt unseen and unheard and marginalized.
Ultimately, we will never have a more inclusive and representative delegation - we will not change the complexion, the culture, or the representation - if we do not primary Democrats.
I've just kept going, like millions of people do every day, because life does not allow them to do anything else.
It's important that people see themselves mirrored in government.
My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.
I have been really furious about the constant charges being lobbed against me about identity politics that, by the way, are only lobbed against women and candidates of color.
I've always had a love affair with Boston.
We make a mistake when we stereotype neighborhoods as 'bad' and not worth our attention or investment.
