WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Former Peltier prosecutor calls for his release. 

Author Yaa Gyasi ("Homegoing")

 The history of America has involved figuring out new ways to subjugate black people since the beginning. In this post-election in-between space, as Donald Trump takes over, we are wondering what fresh hell may be about to be devised. -- Guardian

James Reynolds, former U.S. attorney involved in the case against Leonard Peltier

“I just thought that it was time. With all the circumstances that have gone down, both good and bad, it was maybe time for the president to grant clemency and to end the justice part of the case.” -- Free Speech Radio News

Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes

Streep  noted that one "performance" stood out this year: that of Donald Trump when he publicly mocked The New York Times' Serge Kovaleski, a disabled reporter.

"There was nothing good about it, but it did its job. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can't get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie; it was in real life. That instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone's life because it gives permission for others to do the same." 

"Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."

Rep. Katherine Clark (MA)

"After discussions with hundreds of my constituents, I do not feel that I can contribute to the normalization of the president-elect's divisive rhetoric by participating in the inauguration." -- Ward Room 

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL)

"I could not look at my wife, my daughters or my grandson in the eye if I sat there and attended as if everything that candidate Donald Trump had said about women, Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims ... is OK or erased from my memory." -- Ward Room 

Rudi Giuliani

 “President-elect Trump is going to be the best thing that ever happened for school choice and the charter school movement. Donald is going to create incentives that promote and open more charter schools. It’s a priority.” -- American Prospect 

Samuel E. Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education

The fundamental problem with the free-market model for education is that schools are not groceries. -- L.A. Times