Ayọ Tometi Quotes

We have millions of people who have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment and are living paycheck to paycheck and hand to mouth, and I believe they are just thoroughly fed up and thoroughly beside themselves with grief and concern and despair because the government does not seem to have a plan of action that is dignified and comprehensive and seeks to address the core concerns that the average American has....

While we see that a lot of anger and outrage and frustration was sparked by the barbaric murder of George Floyd, it’s also clear to me that we have been sitting in our homes, navigating the pandemic, dealing with loved ones being sick, dealing with a great deal of fear and concern about what the day and the future will hold.

I was interested in giving folks like black, poor people who’ve been marginalized, brutalized, an opportunity to have more visibility. Before seven years ago, we could barely get the news to talk about police violence, let alone police death.

I probably was the one out of the three of us that was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s get big, let’s get everybody.’ I wasn’t necessarily thinking about organizational structure... I was mostly thinking about building a mass movement that people can be a part of and feel an identity around.

Thinking about this moment, for me, leading up to this, it felt like we weren’t working fast enough... Our work wasn’t as effective as it needed to be. We’ve received all of the awards. I’m like, ‘Dear God, I don’t want another award, I want this to end.’ I do not care for any more accolades! This to me is common sense. You don’t want to see people dying and being murdered like this.

Yesterday was the first time I cried for joy (after the protests in early June). Seeing the news clearly display our images and our slogans about defunding police, I was moved to see the people got the message. Because for far too long, we weren’t being heard. Part of why we even had to go to -Twitter and had to go to Facebook and had to use social media was because there was a silence around anti-black racism in our society. It was just a practical means of communicating.

What inspires me these days are immigrants. Immigrants all over the world who are doing the best that they can to make a living, to survive and also to thrive. Right now there are over 244 million people who aren't living in their country of origin. This is a 40 percent increase since the year 2000. So what this tells me is that the disparities across the globe are only getting worse.

I've been learning a great deal about interdependence. I've been learning about how to trust your team.... After coming back from a three-month sabbatical... I felt it was really important for my leadership and for my team to also practice stepping back as well as also sometimes stepping in. And what I learned in this process was that we need to acknowledge that different people contribute different strengths, and that in order for our entire team to flourish, we have to allow them to share and allow them to shine.... I saw our team rise up in my absence. They were able to launch new programs, fundraise. And when I came back, I had to give them a lot of gratitude and praise because they showed me that they truly had my back and that they truly had their own backs.... In this process of my sabbatical, I was really reminded of this Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu. I am because you are; you are because I am. And I realized that my own leadership, and the contributions that I'm able to make, is in large part due to the contributions that they make, right? And I have to acknowledge that, and I have to see that, and so my new mantra is, "Keep calm and trust the team." And also, "Keep calm and thank the team."

Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It's actually happening all across the globe. And what we need now more than ever is a human rights movement that challenges systemic racism in every single context. ... We need this because the global reality is that black people are subject to all sorts of disparities in most of our most challenging issues of our day. I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa. People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living.