I've been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison.

Every community has crime and violence; it's a part of being human. This idea that black communities are more violent than others is just false. But black folks fight the hardest for our communities. Before governments do, before other people do, we're the first ones to show up. We are the first ones to fight for our lives.

I have never felt the grips of patriarchy and its need to erase black women and our labor... so strongly until the creation of Black Lives Matter.

Patrisse Cullors Quotes