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How to Be an Ally, According to Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Alicia Garza

The organizer, writer, and speaker tells Broadly what she learned growing a hashtag into an international activist movement, and her hopes for the future—including launching the first Black census.
Photo courtesy of Alicia Garza

Alicia Garza is an Oakland-based organizer, writer, and public speaker who currently works as the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an organization dedicated to achieving labor protections for domestic workers. Before that, Garza was the executive director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a labor organization in the San Francisco Bay Area uniting "working class families, youth, and tenants to achieve economic, racial, and gender justice."

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Garza tells Broadly that she has been an activist and organizer since she campaigned for Bay Area schools to carry contraception when she was just 12 years old. "That fight for contraception opened my eyes to all the different kinds of injustice that women face," Garza said in a phone call. "It also opened my eyes to the fact that everyday people can make change."

In 2012, the fatal shooting of an unarmed, 17-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, rocked the nation. In 2013, when Martin’s killer George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder and acquitted of manslaughter, protests broke out in over 100 US cities. During this time of national uprising, Garza along with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, founded Black Lives Matter. What began as #BlackLivesMatter, a hashtag calling attention to racist police brutality, has grown into Black Lives Matter, an international activist movement with more than 40 chapters organizing against systemic racism.

This year, Black Lives Matter turns five years old. "I can’t believe that’s real, five years since we created Black Lives Matter," Garza told Broadly. "We went from being a hashtag to a series of social media platforms connecting online these people who wanted to fight back against racism and we’ve grown from that into an organization that has over 40 chapters in three countries around the world."

Broadly caught up with Garza to discuss her work with Black Lives Matter and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Women’s March, and what non-Black people can do to stand in solidarity with BLM.

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BROADLY: It’s been five years since the founding of Black Lives Matter. What lessons have you learned?
ALICIA GARZA:

I think one thing we’ve learned is that there are many tools that are needed for change-making. But one of those tools, especially, is having a vision for what you want to see. I think that’s really what Black Lives Matter has been able to accomplish: We’re able to encourage people to imagine a world where Black lives would matter, as a compass for the work that they do to actually make that a reality.

Each Black Lives Matter chapter operates autonomously. What was the thought process behind that decision?
We kept each chapter autonomous because it’s important that people in communities are determining what strategies and approaches they’re using to make change. That doesn’t need to come from somebody elsewhere. It’s challenging because it means we have to be really creative around coordination, but ultimately I think it was the best strategy, and it means that we learn through disagreement—and we don’t all agree about what message we should be using. But at the same time, it’s what makes BLM such a powerful force. People have a lot of range to shape what their work looks like.

Garza at this year's Las Vegas Women's March. Photo by Sam Morris via Getty Images

What initiatives are you working on right now?
What I’m working on right now, as we speak, is a process called the Black Futures Lab. We are working to transform Black communities into constituencies that build independent, progressive political power in cities and states. We’re getting ready to launch our first project which is a Black census, where we will be talking to 200,000 Black people across the country about what we think about things and what we want to see happen.

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You’re also the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. What are you currently working on there?
We’ve been doing a lot of work to activate women of color in the upcoming electoral cycle, to build off of a lot of the organizing work we’ve been doing for more than 10 years. I’m really excited about that. We’re also working on building a new media vertical where we’re targeting women, specifically women of color, who are sick and tired of politics as it stands right now, but really want to learn about how to be change-makers.

The project is called Sun Storm—so look out for that soon. The name is actually a weather pattern that occurs most frequently in the Midwest and the South. It’s when you can be in the middle of a rainstorm and the sun is shining.

Black Lives Matter started on Facebook and then grew with social media. How do you think the reversal on net neutrality will impact BLM?
I think the loss of net neutrality is a response and reaction to how successful people have been gathering people to make change. The internet allows for a level of seamlessness with that and that’s threatening for a lot of people. I think it’s one of the ways that our impact is being threatened. Ultimately, it’s also the reason why we have to be really diligent about who are the decision-makers that get to carry these things forward. That’s why you'll see a lot of people really interested in what's’ happening this year in the midterm election. So, certainly leading up to 2020, there will be lots of conversation and activities around making sure that the people who are elected to represent us actually do that.

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What are some effective everyday actions you've seen non-Black people do in solidarity with the BLM movement?
I’ve seen a lot of stuff in schools lately that is really exciting to me. Montpelier High School in Vermont recently raised the Black Lives Matter flag. That was really important. They have a student body that doesn’t have a lot of Black students, but of course you could also imagine how that becomes a challenge for those Black students who are there. So it’s an incredible show of solidarity saying: We see you and we support you and you’re not alone.

And a second Vermont high school plans to raise the BLM flag, too.

Part of what’s happening now is they’re being totally targeted by Breitbart and really harassed. So it’s important also in those times, when people are being really engaged in acts of solidarity, that we really rally around them and support them. These activities are incredibly important because it’s exposing young people early to what it means to fight for racial justice. Also, it’s an important way to building the movement. People always say young people are the core of that, and we need to take that very seriously.

Before the inaugural Women’s March last year, you wrote about your conflicting feelings about the event. Can you tell me more about that and why you chose to attend last year?
At first, I was conflicted about the Women’s March because I sensed it was going to be a lot of white women who were mad that Hillary Clinton lost but weren’t really thinking about the implications of having [Trump] as president beyond the fact that their candidate didn’t win. But when I went to the march, I saw people from all different walks of life who are really terrified about the future of this country and what would happen to them, their friends, neighbors, and the people who they care about. I also saw people who really wanted to learn how to be a part of a movement for social change. In that, I felt really softened. Like everyone else who now is active in making change, I also started somewhere. I’m really grateful that when I started somewhere the response was not dismissive or condescending. Instead, somebody took time with me and was patient with me. I thought the march was an incredible opportunity to pay that forward.

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We need to pay much more attention to really investing in women of color and in Black women who are not just voting but moving our country in the right direction.

You spoke at the Women’s March in Las Vegas this year. How have you seen the event grown and what challenges does it still face?
This year, the marches were huge which is incredible. But there are still challenges to make sure that white women aren’t narrowly focused on their own concerns but are instead thinking about what it would mean to rebuild. We also saw in the elections of this year, there are still white women who are voting who have not learned a lesson from 2016. That’s still a big challenge and we really need some group of people who are invested in racial justice to really invest in moving white women into a broader movement for change that doesn’t allow them to act in selfish ways.

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At the same time, we need to pay much more attention to really investing in women of color and in Black women who are not just voting but moving our country in the right direction. It’s really important that we don’t spend all of our time talking about how white women are doing the wrong thing and actually spend some time investing in women of color and others who are doing the right thing.

Definitely. This year’s Women’s March was more of a kickoff for #PowerToThePolls, the march’s voter registration and activation drive before this year’s midterm elections. What candidates are running this year who you're excited to vote for?
I’m really excited about Stacey Abrams in Georgia. When she wins, she will be the first Black woman to be governor in the United States—which is badass. I’m also really curious about what else is running through the pipes. Currently, I’m doing a lot of research about who is running, who shares my values, and who is someone I can get behind.

Correction: A previous headline for this article states that Black Futures Lab was launched by Black Lives Matter, which was incorrect.