Alicia Garza on Creating Black Lives Matter

Dec 18, 2020

Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement and author of "The Purpose of Power," discusses her journey of transforming a hashtag into a global movement. She emphasizes the role of grassroots organizing in challenging systemic racism and empowers individuals to understand their privilege in enacting change. Garza also critiques black capitalism, urging for deeper allyship and community engagement to address economic inequalities. Listeners are invited to reflect on their personal strengths to contribute meaningfully to societal progress.

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ANECDOTE

Growing Up Amidst Shifting Power

Garza's upbringing during the Reagan era highlighted the right's strategic power consolidation.
This negatively impacted Black communities through policies like the war on drugs.

INSIGHT

Black Lives Matter's Evolution

The Black Lives Matter movement has evolved beyond hashtags and continues to grow.
Garza emphasizes the importance of a soft heart and tough skin in social change work.

ADVICE

Building Multiracial Movements

Building multiracial movements requires addressing historical context and challenging stereotypes.
Focus on shared outcomes and how experiences intertwine, not just superficial diversity.

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Black Lives Matter began as a hashtag when Alicia Garza wrote what she calls ‘a love letter to Black people’ on Facebook, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in 2013.

In November 2020 Garza came to Intelligence Squared to recount how she and her co-founders built Black Lives Matter into the most influential movement of recent times. The phrase she coined was chanted by millions of people around the world this year in protests against the brutal killing in May of George Floyd by a police officer. But, as she pointed out, hashtags don’t build movements, people do. The work was done not through celebrity influencers or a (usually male) leader swooping down from on high, but by people at the grass roots knocking on doors, building a base, and acting collaboratively to fight the persistent message that Black lives are of less value than white lives.

Drawing on the themes of her new book, The Purpose of Power: How to Build Movements for the 21st Century, Garza set out her commitment to bring real change to those whose economic opportunities have been blighted by racism. She explained how these goals will ultimately be achieved not through protest alone but by ensuring that Black people have power in their lives and in politics. And she asked us to think about our privileges and prejudices and consider how we can all contribute to the change we want to see in the world.

Our chair was writer and broadcaster Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

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