BRTW Salutes the #BlackLivesMatter Founders
Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrice Cullors
Hey Revolutionaries! Welcome to BRTW’s Black History Month Heroes. Every day throughout the month of February we’ll be telling you about the black folks who inspire us to be better, badder, and more revolutionary. I’m Mieko Gavia, and today’s going to be a little different: We’re doing a bhm flashback and covering Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrice Cullors: the founders of hashtag black lives matter.
Alicia Garza is a queer, intersectional feminist writer, and activist. She is credited with sparking the movement with a Facebook post regarding George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin. She posted “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter, Black Lives Matter.” Her friend Patrisse Cullors shared the post with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and soon she, Cullors and fellow activist Opal Tometi began to spearhead the soon-to-be massive movemen t.
Garza was born in Los Angeles, California in 1981 to Black and Mexican descendant parents. She attended college at UC-Sandiego and went on to work at institutions like People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). She is currently the Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Regarding the need for queer and trans representation in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Garza says:
“Just like we don’t live in a two-dimensional world, we don’t live two-dimensional lives. Our lives are multidimensional, and because of the systems that we live under, there are particular punishments and sanctions for different aspects of who we are.
“While those punishments and sanctions may look different for different people, they’re meted out by the same system. In America, that so-called justice is often delivered by law enforcement and disproportionately impacts people of color and LGBT people and anyone else deemed to be ‘other.’”
Patrisse Cullors is a queer performance artist, educator, activist and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Cullors was born and raised in Los Angeles California, one of 9 children, and came out as queer at the age of 16. She is a Fullbright Scholar, Alumna of UCLA, winner of the 2007 Mario Savio Young Activist of the Year Award, Glamour Magazine 2016 Woman of the Year, holds an honorary Doctorate from Clarkson University, and is currently the founder and executive director of Dignity and Power Now. Her performance work includes STAINED: An Intimate Portrayal of State Violence.
Patrisse is credited with creating the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, after reading her friend and co-founder Alicia Garza’s Facebook Post: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter, Black Lives Matter.”
One impressive thing about Patrisse Cullors is her willingness to publicly share her evolution as an activist. For example, in 2015 Cullors and her co-founders Opal Tometi and Alicia Garza were featured in a Cosmopolitan magazine interview and photo shoot. A friend and fellow activist contacted Cullors, pointing out the clothes in which the three had been styled-pieces from Banana Republic, whose abusive labor policies are common in the fast-fashion industry. Cullors took the critique to heart and posted a Facebook status noting that the trio had been complicit in an oppressive system, thanking her friend for calling her out, and re-affirming her commitment to solidarity with oppressed peoples internationally.
She also wrote a piece in Esquire Magazine about her changing views on marriage. While she had long been a staunch supporter of marriage equality, Cullors resented the idea that the institution of marriage was a magic fix to oppressed community’s issues and didn’t see marriage in her future. However, when she met her now-partner Janaya Khan (a transgender immigrant and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada), Patrisse’s thoughts changed: “I also soon realized that part of our destiny was not just a union through a spiritual bond but through a legal one as well. Together, we could challenge marriage as a white, heteronormative, religious construct. We could build a new narrative steeped in the intersections of black love…I knew marriage-in all its messy complexity-was right.”
She and Khan wed in June 2016.
Opal Tometi is a writer, immigrant rights activist, and, most prominently, one of the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Born in 1984 to Nigerian immigrant parents, Tometi is regarded as a Transnational feminist. She received her B.A. in History and her M.A. in Communication and Advocacy from the University of Arizona and currently serves as the executive director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration, or BAJI.
Her involvement with the #BlackLivesMatter movement began when her future co-founder Alicia Garza posted a call-to-action on her Facebook following Trayvon Martin’s murder. Tometi is credited with being the social media arm of the developing movement, and helped broaden the discussion of Black Lives Matter to include concerns of institutional racism and intersectional politics.
In an interview with TheNation.com’s Mychal Denzel Smith, Opal states:
“Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It’s a love note for our people, but it’s also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us. Even if we were going to get an indictment or a guilty verdict, that actually would not provide us with the larger vision of liberation that our communities actually deserve…We actually need to push a more profound question around the structures that are oppressing our people.”
Tometi is featured in the Smithsonian’s new National Museum for African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), and she, Cullors, and Garza received honorary doctorates from Clarkson University for their BLM work.