13th
*13th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.“History is not just stuff that happens by accident. We are the products of the history that our ancestors chose, if we’re white. If we are black, we are products of the history that our ancestors most likely did not choose. Yet here we all are together, the products of that set of choices.”*
“There’s really no understanding of our American political culture, without race at the center of it.”
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“If you look at the history of black people’s various struggles in this country , the connecting theme is the attempt to be understood as full, complicated human beings.”*
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*“Creating a context where people are afraid. And when you make people afraid, you can always justify putting people in the garbage can.”
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*“So you have then educated a public, deliberately, over years, over decades, to believe that black men in particular and black people in general are criminals. I wanna be clear, because I’m not just saying that white people believe this, right? Black people also believe this and are terrified of our own selves.”
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*“I mean thats why, when someone asks me about violence, uh, I just uh, I find it incredible because. Because what it means is that the person asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.”
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*“We have a criminal Justice system that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability shapes outcomes.”
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*“We have in this country, people pleading guilty for crimes they didn’t commit, just because the thought of going to jail for what the mandatory minimums are is so excruciating.”
“We got ask ourselves, ‘Do we feel comfortable with people taking the lead of a conversation, in a moment where it feels right politically?’ “
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Justice too long delayed is justice denied.
Justice. I can only pray I get to live to see the day where I can see justice served rightfully to its owners, human beings. And I mean all and every single human being who has ever been bullied, abused and harassed for any aspect of difference.
Essential viewing.
R.I.P Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
R.I.P Malcom X (1925-1965)
R.I.P Fred Hampton (1948-1969)
R.I.P to Tamir Rice (2002-2014) and every other defenseless, unarmed kid that has been cruelly taken from us, for no other reason on this earth but the pigment of their skin.
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R.I.P George Floyd (1973-2020)