I would really ask everyone, please ask yourself first, what is something that you really care about? What is something that is really resonating for… - Bree Newsome

not everybody that came together to do this action is coming from that Christian perspective. But, for me personally, absolutely 100 percent, I mean, I do believe that all men are created equal, with inalienable rights endowed by our creator, absolutely. And that flag is an affront to that value. And for people who, you know, think that there’s some kind of confusion about that, you can go back and read what was written by the people who created the Confederacy. They make it very clear that they seceded because they disagreed with that precept behind the Constitution. They don’t believe that all people are created equal.

I believed strongly in being an engaged citizen and had a certain level of social and political awareness, but my understanding that the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement and its accomplishments shifted during the course of the Obama administration and especially in 2013 when I witnessed the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the attack on voting rights in the state of North Carolina.

The conversation around the need to defund and abolish police is still a new concept for a lot of folks. They still don’t quite understand that concept, like how we could have a society without police forces, but everybody understands that the rent is too high. But of course that intersects with policing all these other issues—that’s what you can bring everybody to the table around.