God grant me the eloquence, composure, and facial control to someday take down the patriarchy as succinctly as New York City Council member Laurie Cumbo did on CNN earlier this week.

When asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown to comment on a gang rape victim’s behavior the night of her assault, Cumbo — without missing a beat — explained:

That’s typical of just what I spoke about: that individuals often talk about the woman, they rarely talk about the individuals who actually committed the rape. Those are the individuals that need to be focused on right now [....] We shouldn’t talk about whether she was drunk, we shouldn’t talk about whether she was properly dressed, we shouldn’t talk about the time of evening that it happened. That is too typical of how we discuss rape in the city, the nation, and really the world. We need to focus in this situation on those five individuals that committed this heinous crime and what were the bad decisions that they made all throughout the day.

Cumbo goes on to speak eloquently about the systematic neglect and marginalization that Black folks — particularly Black women — suffer, and concludes with an affirmation that “whether you are on the Upper East Side or in Brownsville, all women matter, and we’re here to make sure that message is sent loud and clear.”

Transcript below.

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