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Police Brutality Quotes

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Police Brutality Quotes

“Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.”

PoliceActivismAfrican AmericansBlacksPolice BrutalityBirminghamDemonstrations
Book:Why We Can't Wait
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“I'm interested in confronting police brutality and police abuse of cracking down on street performers and street artists, but also in valorizing street art as legitimate performance within the artistic sphere, where it's so often conflated with pan-handling and begging and not "successful" art. I want to change laws around street performance.”

WantArtLawArtistSuccessfulStreetsPerformancesAbusePoliceArtisticPerformersSpheresPolice BrutalityBrutalityBeggingConfrontingStreet ArtStreet Performers
Author:Kalan Sherrard
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“Most pastors railing against gay marriage have never cried out on racism, any type of injustice or police brutality. They've never once made a statement about health care. Many of them are silent on community issues. They are very silent, but they have become the leaders of this particular movement.”

MadeCareCommunityLeaderIssuesMovementParticularTypeGayRacismPoliceSilentInjusticeStatementsHealth CareCriedPastorGay MarriagePolice BrutalityBrutalityAgainst Gay Marriage
Author:Otis Moss III
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“The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. So you have this response of angry young people, with a war going on in Vietnam, a poverty program that was insufficient, and police brutality. All these things gave rise to the black power movement. The black power movement was not a separation from the civil rights movement, but a continuation of this whole process of democratization.”

PeopleWarWholeYoungPoliticalProcessBlackDealsCitiesPovertyIssuesRightsMovementHappeningsProgramPoliceAngryResponseSeparationCivil RightsVietnamPolice BrutalityBrutalityCivil Rights MovementDetroitInsufficientContinuumDemocratizationBlack PowerDisenfranchisement
Author:Danny Glover
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“In Crash, you've got a pathological cop who at the end justifies police brutality. He tells the naïve, young cop that you're going to end up the same as him. He's the most sympathetic character in the movie. So, the naïve cop ends up murdering this Black kid and tries to cover up the evidence. It sort of justifies police brutality and the planting of evidence which is what happened in the O.J. Simpson case.”

TryingEndsCharacterKidsYoungBlackCasesHappenedEvidencePoliceJustifyCopCrashPolice BrutalitySympatheticBrutalityCover Ups
Author:Ishmael Reed
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“You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me.”

IfsWayShouldYearsDoneAbleLastsMotherFatherForceBlackCommunityJusticeLossCasesSonDrugCreatingDaughterConcernedOrganizationAbuseMurderPoliceBrownOffensePolice BrutalityBrutalityRepresentingMistrustAbuse Of PowerSon And DaughterPolice ForceBusting
Author:Quentin Tarantino
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“An act of violence against any innocent person eludes moral justification, disgraces the millions of Americans and people throughout the world who have united in peaceful protest against police brutality, and dishonors our proud inheritance of nonviolent resistance.”

PeopleWorldPersonsUnitedMoralMillionsViolenceProudPoliceResistanceInnocentPeacefulProtestJustificationInheritanceDisgracePolice BrutalityBrutalityEludeDishonorActs Of ViolenceNonviolent ResistancePeaceful ProtestInnocent Person
Author:Benjamin Crump
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“I remember when Langston Hughes used to write a column in black newspapers around this character Jesse B. Semple. He always used that as a voice, sometimes in comic ways, of having everyday people's voice come through this common folk hero, who was an ordinary working guy. He would talk about anything from police brutality to the Korean War. Those kinds of expression and identification are no longer prevalent in our popular culture.”

PeopleWayWritingKindWarSometimesCharacterRememberUsedGuyCultureBlackVoiceCommonExpressionHeroOrdinaryPoliceEverydayFolksNewspapersComicRemember WhenPolice BrutalityBrutalityColumnsKoreanIdentificationPopular CultureKorean WarCommon Folk
Author:Danny Glover
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“In community after community, there are unemployment rates among young African-Americans of 30 to 40 percent. Thirty to 40 percent! Kids have no jobs, they have no future. That is an issue that has got to be dealt with simultaneously as we deal with police brutality, voter suppression and the other attacks that are taking place on the African-American community.”

KidsJobsYoungCommunityDealsIssuesPercentPoliceRateAfrican AmericanThirtyVotersUnemploymentPolice BrutalityBrutalitySuppressionUnemployment RateVoter Suppression
Author:Bernie Sanders
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“I think we waste a lot of time trying to convince other people that we're right. A lot of times we don't actually care what another person thinks, we just want to say what we think. To hear it reflected back to us and that we're okay, to hear that we have been understood and that we're correct - so that we can continue to be who we are in the ways we've been being, and we have nothing to feel bad about and everything is just fine. Even if what we're talking about is, like, police brutality.”

PeopleThinkingTryingCareOkayPoliceConvincePolice Brutality
Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
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“Not only did we survive AIDS, Reaganomics, poverty, racism, gang violence, police brutality, substance abuse - not only did we survive that, we created something endured. And whatever you might think of commercial hip hop now, there's a lot there to like and there's a lot there to critique and there's a lot of things you could say both about. But we created something that endured when we ourselves were not supposed to endure. When we ourselves were not supposed to survive and thrive. So I think that is worthy of respect and preservation and it's US history.”

ThinkingPovertyViolenceRacismAbusePoliceEndureHip HopWorthyAidsThriveGangPolice BrutalityCritiqueSubstance Abuse
Author:Sofia Quintero
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“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.”

Has BeensSufferingLeftLibertyCreativeWindAreasPoliceStormTrialsCellsNationalismQuestsPersecutionVeteranPolice BrutalityBrutalityTribulationTrials And TribulationsBatteredI Have A Dream Speech
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education-a real sex education class-not just pictures and diaphragms and 'un-logical' terms and things like that.....there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not, there are classes on gym, physical education, let's learn volleyball.”

PeopleShouldRealAmericaSexTermReligiousClassDrugRacismPoliceHungryRevolutionaryLogicalGymCultPolice BrutalityBrutalityRacism In AmericaVolleyballApartheidScamsSex EducationPhysical EducationReligious Cults
Author:Tupac Shakur
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