amysonnie

"I was not very long there until, like water, I found my own level. 'My people' — the people who know about oppression, discrimination, prejudice, poverty and the frustration and despair that they produce — were not Irish Americans. They were black, Puerto Rican, Chicano. And those who were supposed to be 'my people', the Irish Americans who know about English misrule and the Famine and supported the civil-rights movement at home... They said exactly the same things about blacks that the loyalists said about us at home. In New York, I was given the key to the city by the mayor, an honour not to be sneezed at. I gave it to the Black Panthers." – Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, 1970