The police stood and watched as “outside agitators” hit UCLA students with 2x4s, sprayed them with chemicals, and launched fireworks into their encampments.

Where is the wall-to-wall news coverage?

Where are the breathless op-eds about campus violence?

Whose humanity counts?

“The United States needs to decide: Do we want to be a democracy? Because a democracy doesn’t send hordes of police to arrest anyone who speaks out against the government.”

New from me 👇🏾
jacquilewis.substack.com/p/do-we-want-t…

Protest matters but we cannot forsake the vote. Read about Middle Church & its Freedom Rising Gathering. TY all who gathered & to Mark Hertsgaard The Nation LaTosha Brown Deth Im Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis & the Middle Church team. You give me hope & life. thenation.com/article/activi…

Lyndon Johnson may have signed the Civil Rights Act in 1968, but he also signed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which let local governments order military equipment from the federal government to suppress potential unrest.

‘We’ll give you some additional rights…

“I love the magic of an empty studio, where something can appear that wasn’t there before.” - Adrienne Hurd

“In art and life, collaboration is how we create something new.” - Lutin Tanner

Art helps us rehearse the future we will win. #FreedomRising2024

“God did the casting.” #FreedomRising2024

“When we did our Middle Christmas special, one of the CBS folks asked ‘How did you cast this choir?’—because there was an older Black man singing next to an Asian woman, a Latino man and a young white person.

I looked at the shot and said, ‘That’s my church.’” - divatamer

“I’m terrified when people in pulpits use narratives of choseness and belonging to seize land and terrorize people—when the land and all the people belong to God.

You can make up a god to justify your violence, or follow God toward peace.” - Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis #FreedomRising2024

“We can’t get well in a nation where some people hoard resources while other folks’ children can’t eat.

Do we want to be well?” - Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis #FreedomRising2024

“When I hear ‘pick up your mat and walk,’ I hear it now after losing two parents, as a woman whose knee didn’t work this week—through the ears of congregants who will never walk or see but know they don’t need to be ‘made well’ to be okay.” - @revjacquilewis
#FreedomRising2024

“The power to love is greater than the power to kill.” - Valarie Kaur #FreedomRising2024

“I belong to oneness, you belong to oneness—and that means you can look at any person, plant, or living thing and say, ‘You are a part of me I do not yet know.” - Valarie Kaur #FreedomRising2024

“When I look at the world I see apocalypse and I taste ash in my mouth, so I have dived back into my ancestors sacred stories to ask: ‘How did they survive apocalypse.’” - Valarie Kaur #FreedomRising2024

“This country has made reparations before—to white people after abolition for the loss of their ‘property.’

And it’s that kind of thing that makes people so insistent that our children not learn history.” - Decolonizing Wealth Project #FreedomRising2024

“Reparations is repair—to fix what’s broken. We do need to pay Black people back for our labor. We have not made reparations to indigenous people!” - Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis

“The reason we don’t have reparations in this country is because our country is not sorry.” - Decolonizing Wealth Project

“If working hard was all you had to do, millions of us would not be experiencing poverty,” - Decolonizing Wealth Project #FreedomRising2024

“In philanthropy, no one asks the fundamental question: ‘From where does that wealth come from?’

Because if we look beneath the surface, we know that money has been extracted from people’s bodies.” - Decolonizing Wealth Project #FreedomRising2024

“The most abused and broken people can become our most powerful forces for healing.

I’ve watched that happen in the Congo. But it happens because movements are owned, driven, and operated by the Congolese.

Grassroots women know what they need.” - V-Day #FreedomRising2024

“When we act from trauma we traumatize the world. Oct. 7th was a calamity but nothing that could happen can justify what has happened in the past 8 months. Nothing can justify that.”

And I refuse to let the trauma of my people be used to traumatize.” - V-Day #FreedomRising2024

“When people say ‘You’re antisemitic for defending the Palestinian people!’ I tell them:

‘You’re wrong. I love being Jewish. I am doing this for the future for Jewish people, too. Because I refuse to let our history of trauma be used for this.’” - V-Day #FreedomRising2024