From my youngest brother to immigrant women to black queer folks, those are the people who keep me going. When I think about their various acts of courage, it reminds me that I am not alone and that we can do even more, and we deserve more, so we have to keep going.
— Opal Tometi
I call on Democrats to use their leverage to fight for a clean DREAM Act and to reject Trump's racist agenda - not only in word but in deed.
We came in as organizers before creating the Black Lives Matter network and project, and we are still organizers, strategists, political thinkers, and philosophers, so we actually have a lot ideas and a lot of really thought out strategies.
Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It's a love note for our people, but it's also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us.
I'm really looking for an agenda that looks at safety for our communities beyond policing.
If black lives mattered, I believe that policing and immigration enforcement would not be the devastating force that it is in our communities.
Fortunately, the leadership of black immigrant communities has always been present in all black liberation movements from leaders like Marcus Garvey to Shirley Chisholm to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte. We know this is our legacy.
President Trump is mentally incapable of imagining the humanity of anyone who looks different from him or hails from a different nation.
I have two younger brothers, and I know my parents have spoken to them about driving and interacting with police. They didn't have those conversations with me, but they did have conversations about being exceptional black people.
The U.S. government has rarely, if ever, used the criminal history of a certain immigrant population in determining if the whole community should be allowed to remain in the country under a humanitarian program, like TPS.
As an immigrant justice advocate, I, of course, want legal status for everyone trying to make it in this country.
Black Lives Matter has been viral, and people are taking it, appropriating it, and using it however they see fit.
I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa. People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living.
I think it's really important that we understand the ways in which blackness plays out, right, and discrimination against black people impacts different communities in different ways but ultimately leaves them undermined and really devalued in our society.
Black people, we are fully deserving of the room and space to fully express our humanity. This is what Black Lives Matter is truly about.
The black immigrant experience in the U.S. must be understood not in contrast to the African American experience but as an integral part of it.
The U.S.' refusal to acknowledge the plight of displaced Haitians and maintaining inhumane practices of neglect, disrespect, and violence amounts to a gross violation of human rights.
Many of the concessions that leading Democrats seem willing to make - from cutting diversity visas to chipping away at family visas - would be made on the backs of black immigrants, people from Africa and the Caribbean who deserve these policies to remain intact as some of the few legal tools they have to immigrate to this country.
Trump's racism has clearly driven his policy decisions during his first year in office - from his Muslim ban and his despicable treatment of DREAMers to his ruthless ramp-up of immigration raids and the callous termination of protections for Haitians and Salvadorans who fled natural disaster and violence.
We deserve to live in a world where there's no impunity, but beyond this question of impunity, there are all these structures that are actually doing a disservice to our people.
Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It's actually happening all across the globe.
In my own personal experience, I've had different family members who have been held in immigration detention because they've had some sort of challenge financially, and they were making difficult decisions, and that led to their immigration detention and, eventually, deportation.
Black immigrants and refugees have just as much at stake in the fight to make Black Lives Matter as African Americans do.
We deserve a multiracial democracy that works for all of us.
The U.S. has long characterized Haitian immigrants as criminals. This tradition began in 1963 when the first boat of Haitians seeking political asylum was summarily rejected by U.S. immigration officials, while at the same time the U.S. admitted thousands of Cubans as refugees and political asylees.
