Top 15 Quotes & Sayings by Cecily McMillan

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Cecily McMillan.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Cecily McMillan is an American activist and advocate for prisoner rights in the United States who was arrested and subsequently convicted of felony second-degree assault. McMillan claimed she was defending herself against an attempted sexual assault by a New York City Police officer as he led her out of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park on March 17, 2012. McMillan's highly publicized arrest and trial led to her being called a "cause célèbre of the Occupy Wall Street movement". McMillan said that her breast was grabbed and twisted by someone behind her, to which she says she responded to by reflexively elbowing her perceived attacker in the face. The officer involved, Grantley Bovell, testified that she deliberately assaulted him; a video showed McMillan "bending her knees, then throwing her right elbow into the officer's eye". She was arrested after a brief attempt to flee, and says she was beaten by police during her arrest. McMillan was convicted of felony second-degree assault on May 5, 2014, and was subsequently sentenced to three months in prison and five years of probation.

American - Activist | Born: 1989

Source: Wikipedia

If somebody is acting maladjusted - which means not happy to be at Rikers - the protocol, as I understand it and have been told by COs unofficially or officially, is to pepper spray that individual to sedate them.

Cecily McMillan

I cannot speak adequately, especially considering my race and my privilege, to the violence of the NYPD or the police in racial terms. That is something that I cannot speak adequately to.

Cecily McMillan

You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders. You can't do that, and they should not be held there. They need rehabilitative therapy.

Cecily McMillan

My town was all-white and shut down Section 8 housing because they didn't want black people to move into the town. And I thought that was wrong - duh.

Cecily McMillan

I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

Cecily McMillan

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation.

Cecily McMillan

I would like to start a discussion about ending solitary confinement. I'd like to start a discussion about the removal of MO wings - an "MO" is a "Mental Observation" inmate - from Rikers Island, to be set up in mental health institutions. You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders.

Cecily McMillan

I think the big turning moment was when I joined the student political action club and started studying nonviolent civil disobedience in response to the Iraq War. The first anti-Bush protest in Atlanta was the first protest that I'd ever been to, and I helped organize the school walkout when I was a junior. It was a really solidifying moment.

Cecily McMillan

I had a sense that my mother was struggling, when I was a kid, working twelve hour days, making $12,000 a year with two kids in a trailer park.

Cecily McMillan

Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

Cecily McMillan

I think that by telling the truth and by attempting to be a good citizen, somehow I've ended up playing with fire. And that's really scary.

Cecily McMillan

I really don't feel good about leaving my house anymore. I don't feel really good about being anywhere in New York City alone anymore.

Cecily McMillan

I can be all pissed off at the oppression of the state, but what does that really mean? Well, it's the tacit consent of a public.

Cecily McMillan

I think any person who goes to Rikers is criminalized, even just for visiting. I go back every week to see my friends in there. When you go to see a criminal, you are by relation a criminal and subject to be treated like one.

Cecily McMillan

We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.

Cecily McMillan

Top 15 Quotes & Sayings by Cecily McMillan

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