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The easy way to begin the origin story for the Black Lives Matter movement is to start in July of 2013 when George Zimmerman the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot down an unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida was acquitted of murder.

That day, Alicia Garza, one of the three co-founders of BLM, posted her response to the verdict on Facebook: the sad part is, theres a section of America who is cheering and celebrating right now. and that makes me sick to my stomach. we GOTTA get it together yall.

And not long after, another post from Garza, in which the closing words read, black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.

From there, Patrisse Cullors, a friend of Garzas since the two met at an organizers conference in Providence, Rhode Island in 2005, altered the final three words of Garzas post to form the unapologetically blunt and now-emblematic hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Quite rapidly, the words became less of a momentary hashtag and more a call to action, then not solely a call to action but more broadly a crusade. And now, co-founders Garza, Cullors and writer and immigration-rights organizer Opal Tometi firmly remain at the forefront of what effectively stands as the premier social justice movement of the contemporary era the absolute trailblazer for modern day Black activism.

Though again, thats the easy way to tell it.

In truth, Black Lives Matter (BLM), as the women attest, is not merely a hashtag-turned-movement established by three community organizers in 2013 but a direct manifestation of centuries of systematic black oppression in America and long-standing racism both domestically and abroad. It is an extensive and complex history which I will absolve from this here platform (also, really, if you arent aware by now ) and one for which a singular root is likely untraceable.

However, if Garza were to pinpoint a foundation, she may begin with Mama Harriet a.k.a. American abolitionist Harriet Tubman who, in 1849, escaped slavery and rescued upward of 70 enslaved family and friends using the Underground Railroad. While on stage Wednesday evening, Garza acknowledged she prays to Tubman often, finding inspiration through her unequivocal persistence.

This is a woman who, when she first went through the Underground Railroad, lost her two brothers, and then they got free and they decided they were going to go back (into slavery), attested Garza. This is a woman who went back for her sister and her sister had died once she got there, but she kept going. This is a woman who went back to get her husband, who had since remarried and decided he wasnt trying to go nowhere. She kept going.

Mama Harriet is somebody who, in short, worked insatiably to break through literal chains and help her loved ones achieve the same. And, as the BLM movements epoch moves further along, it is Tubman who serves as an archetype for their still-to-be-written narrative.

As it has long stood, these chains (injustice, inequality and anti-black racism) remain ceaseless and, while on stage Wednesday for the Womens Resource Center and ASPBs Beyond the Hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter event, Cullors and Garza acknowledged a room full of students and staff looking to join them in efforts to break free. To where it leads will be told with time.

Following their discussion and an impromptu picture and autograph session with more than a few of the events attendees, Cullors and Garza sat down with me for a very brief interview backstage, which youll find below. In it, they discuss the growth of the movement, operating under the current political climate, how cross-sectionality affects their direction and how exactly those chains get unbroken.

The questions and responses below have been unedited.

Myles: First, I appreciate yall taking the time to speak with me. One thing I wanted to get to is that you started this movement over three years ago and, if one were to only pay attention to the headlines or whats portrayed by media on the surface, it would be difficult to accurately gauge the development of the relationship between the black community and law enforcement. Youve been on the ground and actively immersed within the movement; how would you describe the growth youve seen over time?

Patrisse: Over the last three years or in general?

Lets say the last three years.

Patrisse: I think that in the last three years the movement has evolved in different ways. On the one hand, with the killing of Trayvon Martin, I dont know if folks remember but there was very, very little media coverage during his murder. In fact, his family, his parents were the ones that were on the frontline being like This is out of control. Not only did you not arrest the killer of my son, nobodys having this conversation. And so it was really through their leadership that they built a movement around how to have the conversation about Trayvon and its why many of us started to follow the situation over social media, we followed the trial of George Zimmerman and then the acquittal of George Zimmerman. It was a spontaneous response, right? We were literally grieving on social media and processing and talking. It wasnt until Alicia wrote Black Lives Matter and we put a hashtag on it and then we built a project around it. Were organizers. So we didnt come in saying were going to organize a political project but, once we saw how it resonated with people online, we were like, Oh, actually we could build something out from this. This is something that can live both online and offline. And so what you see in that first year, if you look back at protest pictures, of people holding the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter from Los Angeles to Oakland to Delaware to New York, people are using it as a way to have another conversation and to talk about us as Black people and then a lot happens in that year. If you remember Marissa Alexander, the Black woman who was a mother who was fighting off her abuser and fired two warning shots in the air, right? Didnt kill anybody but was on trial for 60 years, she was fighting a 60-year trial. So we were following that. Renisha McBride was killed that year.

Alicia: Thats right. Jordan Davis was killed that year.

Patrisse: Jordan Davis. And so what we start to see is we have to expand the conversation. Very early on we were expanding the conversation around whose Black life actually matters. So the narrative around its only cis-black boys who are the perfect victims, right? We were actually interrupting that narrative from the very beginning. That we need to be showing up for Renisha McBride, we need to be showing up for Cece McDonald. And then the movement evolves again and its when Mike Brown is killed and we realized theres a lot of people around the world and the country that want to put their boots in the ground and fight back. And that for people, Mike Brown and the uprising in Ferguson resonated so deeply in Black communities because we understood that Ferguson was everywhere. The media was trying to tell us something different, like this backward ass town in Missouri killed this boy on the street Oh my god that town, that dont happen in California and we had to be like, Nah actually here are all the ways it does and actually this is a national and international crisis, state violence in Black communities. And so we started the network and that was very intentional. We wanted to be able to hold space for people across the country and we wanted it to be nimble, we wanted it to be decentralized, we wanted it to be local-focused with sort of big ideas around whats possible in a pushback. And now were in a new moment. With 45 (45th U.S. President Donald Trump) in office were, as a network, trying to figure out whats next, how do we relate and were sort of in that.

I was queer before I knew there was a movement and I was Black before I knew there was a Black liberation movement and Ive never felt so much of those things as I do right now.

Bouncing off what you mentioned about changing the narrative, not only are you people of color, but youre women of color and, as you said on stage, two of the three of you identify with the queer community as well. Im curious how that intersectionality has shaped your experience in trying to build this movement. Both in ways youve struggled and how its been advantageous. Question is open to either one of you.

Alicia: I mean, this is our life, you know what Im saying? I was queer before I knew there was a movement and I was Black before I knew there was a Black liberation movement and Ive never felt so much of those things as I do right now. I was just on my phone and I was reading two things: One, they tore it up at Cal (in protest of Breitbart senior editor outspoken Trump-supporter Milo Yiannopoulos) they said, Nah not today. We dont do that kind of thing in the Bay.

Patrisse: (Laughs) I saw that. You saw that?

I did, I did.

Alicia: See what happens when you bring this hate speech to Berkeley, people dont have it (laughs). But the other thing that I was reading was about the executive order thats gonna come out later this week that is basically allowing for discrimination against queer people based on religious preferences. And this is what I was saying in terms of Donald Trumps new deal for Black America. It literally says inside of there that he pledges to protect the church and thats what this looks like. And so what that means for me very personally, beyond the rhetoric is Im married to somebody who doesnt fit inside gender binaries and we were in limbo for a really long time because people in our state decided they wanted to try to move that agenda in California. Supreme Court eventually struck it down but what that means for me very tangibly is if I walk out of here right now and I get in an accident, my next of kin is my partner. And if they cant come and make decisions for me in the hospital when I cant make them for myself that impacts our family. Our ability to start a family is impacted by this kind of stuff like where you can give doctors exemptions for being able to support queer families who want to start a family because of their own personal beliefs. And then of course, there is a war on Black America and when I sit anywhere I am, I am conscious of the fact that I can be and have been a survivor of racially charged violence. So its not a theoretical thing is what Im trying to say. Its the things that impact our daily lives are why I personally am a part of this and why I feel like its so necessary for us to have space where people can come together from various experiences and have each others back. And whats at stake is very tangible things like our right to be in community, our right to love who we want to love, our right to sit in a room like this together, you know what I mean? Like people could literally change the rules and say Actually, we dont want you all in a room together. Yall go over here, yall go over here and yall go over there. And theres already a way in which theyre trying to divide us, right? So the plan for Black America around jobs revolves around us being a wedge in terms of the immigration reform fight, which is not acceptable. Not only because there are Black immigrants but because the ways in which theyre trying to divide us from each other, like people that have a lot at stake, has the potential to take the humanity out of this country if that makes sense. So thats what it is for me. Thats what I got.

100 years from now, looking back on Black Lives Matter, whats the one word you would want people to reflect and describe it as?

Alicia: Power.

Patrisse: Yes.

Power. And same for you?

Patrisse: Mhm.

Originally posted here:
A sit-down with #BlackLivesMatter co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors - Highlander Newspaper

After Lady Gagas Super Bowl Halftime Show last night, an inevitable flood of think pieces emerged online, all debating whether or not her performance provided a strong enough political message for Trumps divided America. Some say yes, but many say no.

The Hillary Clinton supporter has been unusually quiet since the Presidential Inauguration, notably ignoring the Womens March in D.C. and Trumps recent immigration laws, despite being a vocal feminist and longtime advocate for inclusion. This left many Little Monsters to assume Gagas big message was waiting to be unveiled on the Halftime Show stage, though her statement in the end was too subtle for critics: an opening rendition of This Land Is Your Land, and her mentioning LGBT people with Born This Way. Nothing more.

Related |Lady Gaga's Big, Queer, High-Flying, Mic-Dropping Halftime Show

Gagas setlist was designed first for entertainmentnot protestspanning all her biggest hits, from Poker Face to Bad Romance. When performing these in the past, Gagas always infused her chart-toppers with challenging showmanshipbleeding on stage during Paparazzi or emerging from a vessel for Born This Way. This daring drama has elevated her radio singles, giving Gaga the reputation of being a pop provocateur who never plays it safe. Last nights spectacle, however, was noticeably tame, which made Gaga's message depend entirely on a setlist that lyrically overlooked pressing political problems.

Related |Lady Gaga AnnouncesJoanneWorld Tour in Wake of Super Bowl Slay

Had Mother Monster dove deeper into her discography to include "Angel Down," "Americano" and "Til It Happens to You," her Super Bowl performance wouldve offered a much stronger social statement on the world's biggest stage. An unfortunate missed opportunity, Gaga could've, and should've, bravely addressed relevant issues like racial inequality, immigration and sexual assault through these three tracks.

"Angel Down"

Lifted off Lady Gaga's last studio album, Joanne, "Angel Down" is a solemn piano ballad about Trayvon Martin,the unarmed Florida teen who was fatally shot by George Zimmerman. "Angel down, angel down, why do people just stand around?" she sings, referencing her qualms with America's Judicial system. "I was overwhelmed by the fact that people just stood around and didnt do anything about [Trayvon] and that the justice system continues to over and over again not seek justice for these families, Gaga said in an interview withBeats 1s Zane Lowe.

"Americano"

The mariachiBorn This Way cut was Lady Gaga's response to Arizona's anti-immigration law,SB 1070, which requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested when there is "reasonable suspicion" they are in the U.S. illegally. "Mis canciones son de la re-revolucin," Gaga sings on the acid-house track, aiming to empower disenfranchised communities in our country. "Mi corazn me duele por mi generacin." When the singer performed at Arizona's US Airways Center in 2010,she had the message, "Stop SB 1070," written on her arm, and told the crowd, "We have to be active, we have to protest."

"Til It Happens To You"

Co-written with Diane Warren for the 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, "Til It Happens to You" highlights the pain of sexual assault. The song, which was nominated for an Emmy, Grammy and Oscar in the same year, sees Lady Gaga remembering her own experience being raped at age 19 by someone she knew. "Its something that changed me forever," she told Hollywood Reporter.In a nation where Trump's "pussy grabbing" rhetoric is passable, "Til It Happens to You" would've been a powerful option for Gaga's stripped-down piano moment.

Read more here:
Three Lady Gaga Songs That Would've Made Her Super Bowl Performance a Protest - Out Magazine

Kassandra Frederique (Averie Ann Cole)

Crack babies, welfare queens, superpredators, thugs. Thats what they call us; those are the lies they tell about us.

The war on drugsa war on the most vulnerable and targeted black and brown communities in the United States of Americashapes black history just as much as it shapes our present struggle for liberation from a white supremacist capitalist state. One cannot discuss black history in its entirety without discussing the war on drugsand dismantling that war will shape our future.

In 2013 this truth led Kassandra FrederiqueNew York State director for the Drug Policy Alliance, visionary and 2016 The Root 100 honoreeto create a series dedicated to drug-policy reformers to place the urgent need for justice squarely in the Black History Month narrative.

At its conception, DPAs Black History Month series was the birth of awareness for Frederique, who has been at the forefront of the war against drugs since 2009.

In February 2012, New York City Police Officer Richard Haste gunned down 18-year-old Ramarley Graham in his grandmothers home after targeting him on the street. Haste alleged that Graham was selling marijuana and used that unsubstantiated allegation as a rationalization for his cold-blooded execution.

When traces of THC, the chemical found in marijuana, were discovered in Trayvon Martins system during the autopsy of his body, racists used that fact to justify George Zimmerman profiling, stalking and ultimately killing him on that rainy night in Sanford, Fla.

I knew in that moment if we didnt connect the way the drug war was killing us, then we were complicit in disappearing their lives, Frederique says.

Shes absolutely right. In 2015 the New York Times declared 1.5 million black men between the ages of 25 and 54 missing. Because of early death and incarceration, there are 1.5 million more black women who are not behind bars than men in that age group. That disparity for whites is virtually nonexistent. One in every 13 black Americans has lost voting rights because of disenfranchisement laws. In 2014 the imprisonment rate for black American women was more than twice that of white women.

These oppressive conditions under an expanded police state can be traced directly to the so-called war on drugs, which is a systemic tool of enslavement. It has ravaged black and Latinx working-class communities, leaving white communities relatively unscathed. It has been positioned as a necessary response to crime and poverty when we know it to be a primary cause.

For Frederique, it has been critical to connect those dots for people who might not see the broader and deeper picture. And what better time than February?

The Black History Month project started out as an apology, Frederique tells The Root. From me to myself, to the future black drug-policy reformers that were on their way. I believed this narrative that what was happening to usincarceration, addiction, family destabilizationwas a result of us getting for what we asked for.

I had always asked for a more definitive commitment from our movement on racial justice but I guess I always feared that they would throw back in my face that we did this, Frederique continues. I think back to my earlier years in this movement and wondered if I was assertive enough, if I asked all the questions that I needed to, did I study our movement hard enough.

Now when I speak at forums, and attendees ask me what I think the role of black America was in the drug war, I reply, Yes, we wanted some of us to be locked up, but we also wanted treatment and we never got that part, she adds.

As previously reported by The Root, when Bill Clintons crime bill passed in 1994, it was with the help of 23 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were expecting a reinvestment in the black community.

In addition to that never happening, the bill was stripped of the Racial Justice Act, which would have allowed death row inmates to use data showing racial inequities in sentencing. The bill was also stripped of $3.3 billiontwo-thirds of it from prevention programs. A provision that would have made 16,000 low-level drug offenders eligible for early release was also removed.

They urinated on us and told us it was raining, Frederique says. But I am not as gracious with our leaders of the past; Charlie Rangels apology in [Ava DuVernays documentary] 13th is not enough.

We threw away whole parts of our community, and we need to examine that as well, because that is our history. It just isnt all of it, and there is power in telling the full story, Frederique continues.

Frederique also notes that its important to recognize that drug-policy reform is not an industry of white saviors. It is so easy to believe otherwise, only because black pioneers have largely been erased from the conversation.

For the most part, we are meant to believe that benevolent white folks are how we got to where we are at now in our war against the war on drugs, she tells The Root.

Yes, there are tons of brave white drug-policy reformers who forged paths for the drug war to end, like Ethan Nadelmann, Craig Reinarman and Ira Glasser, but they all read Troy Dusters book, Frederique continues. Beny Primm mentored Deborah Peterson Small. There was and is a resistance that has always been black.

Black people have been the most severely impacted by the war on drugs, Frederique adds. And in this moment when white faces have caused the nation to have a critical interrogation about what to do about drugs, black people need the whole story so, in the moment, that we can demand the necessary acknowledgment, atonement and action to build our communities.

Drug policy is race policy. And to honor drug-policy reformers on the front lines, the Drug Policy Alliance, in partnership with The Root, is bringing you the stories of four phenomenal people who have been instrumental in shaping conversations around drug policy and its lethal effects on black communities around the country.

We begin next week with Wanda James, CEO of the Denver-based cannabis dispensary Simply Pure. James, the first black woman to own a cannabis dispensary, says that its time for black America not only to look at the economic opportunities that the cannabis industry represents but also to do the necessary work of eradicating the stigma surrounding drug use: All of the people that come to the dispensaries and all of the lawyers and all of the doctors and all of the elected officials that pretend like they dont know what weed is and they dont smoke cannabis need to come to the table and get real.

Lets get real.

See the original post here:
Kassandra Frederique, Drug Policy Alliance's Black History Month Series Visionary, Talks Owning Our Narratives - The Root

Evan F. Moore | Syndicated Columnist

Black people in America are sick and tired of falling for the swindle that America loves to call equality.

And thats why weve seen so many protests pop up all over the country.

Remember how Lucy tries to get Charlie Brown to kick a field goal on the Peanuts cartoon? Charlie Brown says to himself, She must think Im the most stupid person alive. Then Lucy would convince Charlie Brown to kick the football, and then does what she always does takes the ball from him so he can embarrass himself.

Thats what America has done to black people since we showed up as slaves in Jamestown, Virginia, back in 1619.

Since then, America in many cases thinks were stupid. And the best way to battle darkness is to shine a light on the things that have divided so many Americans.

Even though the Black Lives Matter movement appears to be one of the most polarizing groups around, many Americans are unaware that theres a difference between the hashtag, the movement and the organization.

Black Lives Matter was created in response to the 2012 killing of a Florida teen named Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. Since Zimmerman was acquitted of murder in 2013, hes been every bit of the thug that he and many others painted Martin and his family out to be. His resume includes domestic battery after, according to The Orlando Sentinel, in September 2013 his then-estranged wife, Shellie, accused him of threatening her and her father. In November that same year he was charged with aggravated assault on a girlfriend after she said he pointed a shotgun at her. Then, in January 2015, he was charged with aggravated assault for throwing a wine bottle at his female roommate. All charges were eventually dropped by the women. However, Shellie said in a 2013 interview with NBCs Today show, In hindsight I shouldve (pressed charges), and I really regret that, but Im on probation and the officers made it very clear that day if I pressed charges we were all going to go to jail and I wouldve been the only one to stay there.

Add to that CV racism and arrogance, after, according to CBS News, police overheard him using slurs and being belligerent with a sheriffs deputy while being kicked out of a bar this past November.

Zimmermans killing of Martin, acquittal and the way he has carried himself after the fact have been too much for black people to take. Thats why the founders of Black Lives Matter Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors decided that enough was enough.

Meanwhile, white America remains largely silent on things that affect black lives. The protests and other forms of civil disobedience are BLMs, and other civil rights organizations, way of holding a mirror up to our country to show that America doesnt live up its promise like many people seem to believe.

From my experience in covering protests, reading activist groups manifestos and speaking to members, Black Lives Matter simply means that black lives ought to matter just as much as anyone elses. No less, and most definitely, no more.

Having said that, America is really lucky that black people, and Charlie Brown for that matter, only want to be treated with respect instead of going for revenge like the colonists did.

After all, revolutions, stateside or not, have been started off of less.

Evan F. Moore is a syndicated columnist with Gatehouse Media.

See original here:
EVAN F. MOORE: Intersection of race, violence and culture - Houma Courier

'Rest in Power' by Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin(Photo: Spiegel & Grau)

The world will never know who Trayvon Martin the unarmed 17-year-old fatally shot in Florida by neighborhood watch coordinatorGeorge Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012 could have grown up to be.

In a way, wenever knew who he was. His humanity was lost, broken down intoschool records,headlinesand 140 charactersin the ensuing media scrutiny and trial of Zimmerman for his role in the altercation that ended in Trayvon's death.

In Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin (Spiegel & Grau, 331 pp., ***out of four stars), Trayvons parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, gather the pieces and attempt to present the whole of who their sonwas when he was just a boy before he became a martyr and before his death sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

USA TODAY

Trayvon Martin's parents, five years after his shooting, weigh political bids

He was aboy whofell in love with aviation and dreamed of flying beyond the world he knew. A boy trying to find his place in a society that already viewed him as a man.

But as much as the book is about Trayvon's life, it's also a meditation on the criminal justice system that his parents believe did not do himjustice.

Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin have written 'Rest in Power.'(Photo: Adrian Freeman)

In Fulton and Martins words, it was Trayvon their "Tray," who called his mom "Cupcake" and counted everyone he met as a friend who was put on trial. In alternating chapters, the parents detail how their son's nonviolentinfractions were examined under a microscope while Zimmerman's previous run-ins with the law were, in their view, glossed over. (Zimmerman was arrested in April 2012 after nationwide protestsand charged with second-degree murder. At his trial, Zimmermansaid he felt threatened by the teen, whom he had followed in his car and then on foot. He was later acquitted.)

The divorced couple tunnel into how the prosecution was barred from using the phrase "racial profiling" and how cultural differences and linguistic racismhurt the credibility of the prosecution's key witness, Trayvon's friend Rachel Jeantel.

Later, Fulton and Martin write that prosecutors neglected to ask the right questions and present more character witnessesto humanize Trayvon in the eyes of the jury.

Trayvon Martin, left, and George Zimmerman. right.(Photo: AP)

But while Rest in Powerlaments the pitfalls of the case and the state of racial justice, Fulton and Martin also offer a glint of hope in the rallies for justice, the support which extended from Hollywood to the White House, and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, which brought together people who understood that, no,Trayvon wasn't an angel because he was a human being.

Rest in Powerstands as a reminder not only of Trayvon's life and deathbut of the vulnerability of black livesin a country that still needs to be reminded they matter. It also offers a prayer that someday, as Fulton writes, "the killing will stop" and "the healing will begin."

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Trayvon Martin's parents honor son's 'Enduring Life' - Courier-Journal - The Courier-Journal