Michael Brown 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

“It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“Why is it deemed justifiable and appropriate for cops/police
officers to kill other cops (friendly–fire) and citizens?
Why do cops kill?
Are they not taught to maim or slow down someone running
or reaching for a weapon?
If not, why not?
Why do cops kill first and ask questions last?


Why are police officers being military trained?
What can we as citizens, taxpayers, and voters do to stop these
killings and beatings of unarmed people?
Why do we let this continue?
How many more must die or get beat up before we realize
something is wrong and needs to be changed?
Will you, a friend, or a family member have to be killed or beaten
by a cop before we realize that things have to change?


Who's here to protect us from the cops when they decide to use
excessive force, shoot multiple shells, and/or murder us?”
― Obiora Embry, Expanding Horizons Through Creative Expressions

“Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“Death wins nothing here,
gnawing wings that amputate––
then spread, lift up, fly.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

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

“To escape the throngs, we decided to see the new Neil Degrasse Tyson planetarium show, Dark Universe. It costs more than two movie tickets and is less than thirty minutes long, but still I want to go back and see it again, preferably as soon as possible. It was more visually stunning than any Hollywood special effect I’d ever seen, making our smallness as individuals both staggering and - strangely - rather comforting. Only five percent of the universe consists of ordinary matter, Neil tells us. That includes all matter - you, and me, and the body of Michael Brown, and Mork’s rainbow suspenders, and the letters I wrote all summer, and the air conditioner I put out on the curb on Christmas Day because I was tired of looking at it and being reminded of the person who had installed it, and my sad dying computer that sounds like a swarm of bees when it gets too hot, and the fields of Point Reyes, and this year’s blossoms which are dust now, and the drafts of my book, and Israeli tanks, and the untaxed cigarettes that Eric Garner sold, and my father’s ill-fitting leg brace that did not accomplish what he’d hoped for in terms of restoring mobility, and the Denver airport, and haunting sperm whales that sleep vertically, and the water they sleep in, and Mars and Jupiter and all of the stars we see and all of the ones we don’t. That’s all regular matter, just five percent. A quarter is “dark matter,” which is invisible and detectable only by gravitational pull, and a whopping 70 percent of the universe is made up of “dark energy,” described as a cosmic antigravity, as yet totally unknowable. It’s basically all mystery out there - all of it, with just this one sliver of knowable, livable, finite light and life. And did I mention the effects were really cool? After seeing something like that it’s hard to stay mad at anyone, even yourself.”
― Summer Brennan

“There are gods
of fertility,
corn, childbirth,

& police
brutality--this last
is offered praise

& sacrifice
near weekly
& still cannot

be sated”
― Kevin Young, Brown: Poems

“A finger
is a gun--
a wallet

is a gun, skin
a shiny pistol,
a demon, a barrel

already ready--
hands up
don't shoot--”
― Kevin Young, Brown: Poems

“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: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement