There is hope for humanity, but in order for us to get there, we really have to interrogate not just what it takes to change laws, but what it takes to change culture that supports laws that uplift humanity and also supports laws that serve to denigrate it.
Alicia Garza
We all lose when bullying and personal attacks become a substitute for genuine conversation and principled disagreement.
We are clear that all lives matter, but we live in a world where that's not actually happening in practice. So if we want to get to the place where all lives matter, then we have to make sure that black lives matter, too.
Every successful social movement in this country's history has used disruption as a strategy to fight for social change. Whether it was the Boston Tea Party to the sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the South, no change has been won without disruptive action.
Black Lives Matter was created as a response to state violence and anti-black racism and a call to action for those who want to fight it and build a world where black lives do, in fact, matter.
Black Lives Matter is not just concerned with what happens in policing. The disregard, the disrespect, and the lack of dignity for black life transcends through the fabric of our society.
Sometimes you have to put a wrench in the gears to get people to listen.
This country was created from stolen land and stolen labor. And from a moral perspective, but also from a practical one, everybody knows that when you steal, you're always looking over your shoulder because you know that somebody may steal it back.
How do we stop violence, looting, and riots? The way that we stop that is by making sure that people have the things that they need to thrive.
For us, #BlackLivesMatter is really a re-humanization project. It's a way for us to love each other again, to love ourselves, and to project that love into the world so that we can transform it.
I think race and racism is probably the most studied social, economic, and political phenomenon in this country, but it's also the least understood.
The police are not taking accountability for the violence that they enact in our communities, and yet there isn't as much outrage about that as there is about some broken windows and lost property.
My definition of feminism is a social, political, economic system by which all genders are valued, respected, and can live dignified lives.
I'll be honest with you: I think that it's really difficult, this framing around 'good cops' and 'bad cops.' Policing, as a system, is incredibly corrupt, period.
There is no separation between the black community and the LGBT community. As a black, queer woman myself, I often have to assert, right, that it's not one or the other but that I am all of these things.
We want to see a world where black lives matter in order for us to get to a world where all of our humanity is respected.
The reality is that race in the United States operates on a spectrum from black to white. Doesn't mean that people who are in between don't experience racism, but it means that the closer you are to white on that spectrum, the better off you are. And the closer to black that you are on that spectrum, the worse off your are.
Black Trans Lives Matter, to me, is really different. I think it speaks most directly to the marginalization and disenfranchisement of trans people within the black community.
We need to make sure we're creating spaces to create new leaders and new types of leadership.
Black Lives Matter started from a post that I put on Facebook after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, just trying to process what had happened and wanting to find community around being in a lot of grief and having a lot of rage.
The biggest misconception about Black Lives Matter is that BLM is just one entity; Black Lives Matter is an organization and a network. We are a part of the movement, but we are not the movement.
Just like we don't live in a two-dimensional world, we don't live two-dimensional lives.
I am not ready to give up this country without a fight.
We need the best and the brightest thinkers, strategists, coders, surveillance experts, tech geeks, and disruptors to utilize all of the tools we have available to us to build the world that we want to see. A world where black lives matter. A world where all lives matter.
It's not lost on me that every single person who told their story about Harvey Weinstein talked about how they were silenced, how they were encouraged not to speak up, how they were embarrassed or ashamed to speak up.
The night that George Zimmerman was acquitted, I think, for black people all over the world, there was a collective feeling of incredible grief and incredible rage. And that verdict not only let George Zimmerman go home to his family, but it sent a message to black people everywhere that our lives did not matter.
When we sit and think about what the world needs to looks like in order for black lives to actually matter, there is a debate: What is going to make our communities safe? How do we deal with harm? How do we solve problems that come up in our communities?
It took me a long time to figure out that I didn't have to do everything, that it was actually a lot more helpful if I did a couple things really, really well than a whole bunch of things really badly, or nothing at all, because the whole thing was overwhelming.
Find an organization that you want to support and get involved. You can give money or give time.
When people say, 'Well, I don't talk to my family because they're all conservatives,' or 'I don't talk to my family because they're racist,' I'm, like, 'No, no, no; that's exactly who you need to be talking to.'
Ultimately, policing in and of itself is problematic.
If you're to look at people's social networks, not a lot of white people have a social network that has lots of black people - it doesn't happen. It makes sense to me that online would be as segregated as offline because it's just mimicking patterns that exist in real life.
When we address the disparities facing black people, we get a lot closer to a true democracy where all lives matter.
For me, it's clear Beyonce sees herself as a part of the movement for black lives and believes that black lives matter - and ultimately, that's what matters.
Whether or not you call it Black Lives Matter, whether or not you put a hashtag in front of it, whether or not you call it the Movement for Black Lives, all of that is irrelevant. Because there was resistance before Black Lives Matter, and there will be resistance after Black Lives Matter.
There have to be consequences for police who take the law into their own hands. There has to be a shift in the use-of-force policies that are used in departments across the country.
There has to be a readjustment of resources that is being diverted to police and policing as opposed to community health services, and there certainly has to be control over the police by the communities that they are supposed to protect and serve.
Black Lives Matter, as a network, will not, does not, has not, ain't going to endorse any candidates. Now if there are activists within the movement that want to do that independently, they should feel free, and if that's what makes sense for their local conditions, that's fantastic.
It's hard to be a leader when you have to make hard choices and when you have to do what's right, even though people are not going to like you for it.
I'll be honest with you, I really struggle with the conversation around gun control.
We need to make sure that we have an honest, honest conversation and that we engage honest practices around how racism operates in this country. It's not just about people being mean to each other.
We understand that, in our communities, black trans folk, gender-nonconforming folk, black queer folk, black women, black disabled folk - we have been leading movements for a long time, but we have been erased from the official narrative.
I grew up in Marin County, which is a wealthy suburb of San Francisco.
I think that we are all deeply, deeply committed to the liberation of black people. And so, when you put people together who have and share that commitment, the sky is the limit.
The reason that I started the Black Futures Lab is because I have some clarity about what I think needs to happen in relationship to electoral organizing. It's not a destination. It is a set of tools that we use to engage people that we care about, en masse, around issues that are important to us.
Saying 'black lives matter' both literally and figuratively restores people's dignity.
The Clintons use black people for votes but then don't do anything for black communities after they're elected. They use us for photo ops.
I think that there is an element where leadership is lonely, but I also believe that it doesn't have to be like that.
It's actually OK to be unique and have your own contributions, to celebrate what it means to be black, how we've survived and thrived through the worst conditions possible.
As you keep pulling back the layers of how deeply rooted anti-blackness and white supremacy are in this country, it is exhausting, and it is traumatizing.
