ALICIA GARZA: “… Black Lives Matter was born out of the incredible pain and rage that each of us feels and that black people across the world feel when any of our lives are taken unnecessarily, particularly in relationship to state-sanctioned violence. The phrase was coined on Facebook, and it was really a response to the responses that I was hearing after the verdict in the Trayvon Martin trial. And those responses really ranged from responses that we call kind of social justice cynicism, right, where folks were talking about how the criminal justice system doesn’t work for black people, which is true, and then, on the other hand, there was a real narrative around respectability politics and how if Trayvon had only pulled up his pants and if we just vote and if we just get a better education, then somehow we can save ourselves from untimely deaths, when the reality is that structural racism kills black people every single day. In fact, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has documented that every 28 hours a black person in this country is murdered by police, security guards or vigilantes.”
Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, director of Truth and Reinvestment at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and founder of Dignity and Power Now, a grassroots organization in Los Angeles fighting for the dignity and power of incarcerated people and their families.Opal Tometi, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
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