Fife framed her decision to publicize the messages as being directly inspired by Dr. King, ending her tweet thread with the closing line from a 1967 address: “We say to our nation tonight, we say to our Government, we even say to our FBI, we will not be harassed, we will not make a butchery of our conscience, we will not be intimidated and we will be heard.”
Fife added in an interview with KQED on Tuesday that she’s continuing to fight for many of the same things King was, including racial and economic justice, and particularly the rights of poor people.
“And if we understand and deify [King] for those things, why don’t we understand that racist attacks in pursuit of those very same things are happening right here in the city of Oakland? And how progressive are we to allow these things to continue to happen?” she asked. “I’m asking folks to stand with me because what’s happening is unacceptable. I have children.”
Warning: Audio of the messages, playable in the following embedded tweets, contains explicit, violent, racist language.