Ferguson Quotes

“Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.”
― Audre Lorde

“will I ever get over the pull I feel to both of these places?”
― Sara Ferguson

“Police are killing black men. Mona Scott-Young is killing black women.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“Local issues have global ramifications.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

“They've been practicing racism so long, it's perfect.”
― Darnell Lamont Walker

“Life's a bitch and her stripper name is Karma."
- quote from Diane Madden Ferguson's UNDERTOW”
― Diane Madden Ferguson, Undertow: A U.S. Navy Veteran's Journey Through Military Sexual Trauma

“Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Marton interacted, thus transforming a seventeen-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Carol Anderson

“Authentic and sustainable solidarity efforts must be premises on this broader understanding of why Black lives matter, why they have not mattered historically, and why they still do not matter today as they should. Centralizing Black communities in the current moment is how genuine solidarity begins. South Asian, Arab, and Muslim activists have been a careful not to co-opt or expand this premise by applying it to their communities - by stating “All Lives Matter” or “South Asian Lives Matter,” for example. This stems from the knowledge that when Black lives actually matter, when Black people are not seen as disposable commodities, then all lives will truly matter. In other words, when Black people, who are at the bottom of America’s divisive racial ladder, are free, it will be impossible for systems and policies to engage in discrimination and racism against other communities of color.”
― Deepa Iyer, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future

“During the commentary on Ferguson, someone pointed out that the purpose of the police is supposed to be to protect and serve. At least, that’s their slogan. Soldiers are trained to shoot to kill. We saw the way in which that manifested itself in Ferguson.”
― Angela Y. Davis

“It is a mistake to assume that all we have to do is guarantee the prosecution of the cop who killed Michael Brown. The major challenge of this period is to infuse a consciousness of the structural character of state violence into the
movements that spontaneously arise.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

“a smashed window always rings louder
in the media's ears than the clacking
of six rounds emptied into
a black teen's body
#Ferguson”
― Remi Kanazi, Before the Next Bomb Drops: Rising Up from Brooklyn to Palestine