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Patrisse Khan-Cullors Books

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“After removing a debilitating number of jobs and the funding to ensure quality schools, after instituting laws that disrupt families' possibility to thrive, welfare laws beginning in the 1970s meant that women often lost benefits needed to feed their children if they had a man present in the home, even if, between the two of them, they still subsisted on poverty wages. Our mothers and fathers and daughters and sons were criminalized for choices made out of absolute desperation and lack of any other real options.”

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Book:When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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“Clinton had a universe of faults but under her administration we likely wouldn't have seen married people being picked up and separated by border patrol. Health care, including Planned Parenthood, which is the only access to prenatal and gynecological health care many poor women have at all, wouldn't be at risk. The Paris Climate Accord wouldn't have been tossed out. We wouldn't be going the other way on mass incarceration, prison privatization and the drug war. We wouldn't be facing the rebirth of the old Jim Crow. Which is not to say that a Clinton presidency would have meant peace and justice for all. It wouldn't have. She would have pushed an agenda that elevated the American Empire in terrible ways. But the loss of even the most compromising of agreements, accords and legislation means that we are starting from negative numbers. It means that we can't focus on pushing for something far better than the ACA -- like single-payer health care -- but that we have to fight for even the most basic of rights.”

PovertyStruggleRacismHuman RightsCivil RightsPresidencyHillary ClintonGoing To Hell In A Handbasket
Book:When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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“I grew up in a neighborhood that was impoverished and in pain and bore all the modern-day outcomes of communities left without resources and yet supplied with tools of violence. But when someone in my neighborhood committed a crime, let alone a murder, all of us were held accountable, my God. Metal detectors, searchlights, and constant police presence, full-scale sweeps of kids just walking home from school--all justified by politicians and others who said they represented our needs. Where were these representatives when white guys shot us down?”

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Book:When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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“And I get angry. Because we've tried so hard. Ninety-six percent of Black women tried so hard in voting against him. And not only did this country not elect Clinton, it elected a person who publicly supported sexual assault, a man one accused of rape by his daughter Ivanka's mother. I am angry with the Democratic Party for not knowing that there could have been and should have been a better candidate and angry that a better campaign -- a campaign that honored the journey, that included community in real and transformative ways -- was not launched. I am angry I didn't realize -- or accept on a cellular level -- how wedded to racism and misogyny average Americans are. I am angry at my own naiveté. Our own naiveté. There was a real and substantive difference between these two candidates and we didn't take that seriously enough.”

RacismMisogynyDonald TrumpHubrisPolitics Of The United StatesHillary Clinton2016 Elections
Book:When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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“Being hungry is the hardest thing, & to this day I have prayers of gratitude for the Black Panthers, who made Breakfast for Children a thing that schools should do. We qualified for free lunch & breakfast, & without them I am almost sure we wouldn't have made it out of childhood alive despite my hardworking parents.”

HungerFree LunchBlack Panther PartyFood JusticeFree BreakfastSurvival Pending Revolution
Book:When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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