The Black Lives Matter National Network and the movement at large are sophisticated. We're not easily won over by talking points and campaign trail pledges. We want to see meaningful collaboration and a genuine transformation of American democracy.
I fight to prioritize black mothers and black children because we deserve to live in a world where our healing is centered and our lives are treated with dignity, respect, and care.
I have been arrested several times protesting.
With Black Lives Matter, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't just going to live online. We were like, 'We're creating this thing and then it's also going to live with black folks on the street and protests and organizations.' It was very important for us to use the hashtag as a way to have a larger conversation and as an organizing tool.
I knew marriage was not the answer to changing the conditions for poor, black, queer folks. So I never felt compelled to get married - it just didn't seem important. But even if marriage wasn't right for me at the time, or a quick fix toward black empowerment, I found it repulsive that loving same-sex couples were refused the right.
I developed 'Power: From the Mouths of the Occupied' while I was an Artist in Residence at Kalamazoo College.
Black women voted against Roy Moore not because they necessarily wanted the other guy; they voted against Roy Moore because they knew that would be better for the people of Alabama and, to be frank, better for the rest of the country.
When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children - me, my five brothers, and three sisters - could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.
I was trained within a black radical tradition that encouraged struggle within our own movements because it sharpens collective analysis - bringing us closer to the tools we need to achieve liberation.
I've been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison.
The black radical agenda, which pushes us closer to freedom and the agenda to which I subscribe, calls for an eradication of white supremacy and an adoption of values and traditions endowed from the black experience.
Before BLM, there was a dormancy in our black freedom movement. Obviously many of us were doing work, but we've been able to reignite a whole entire new generation, not just inside the U.S. but across the globe, centering black people and centering the fight against white supremacy.
Local law enforcement agencies, national police authorities, and other state-operated surveillance has created a hostile environment for communities at the margins.
#BlackLivesMatter was born online but now lives in street actions, in conversations in our homes, and in the dignity swelling in our hearts. That is the power of the open Internet, and it is why we must do everything we can to protect black voices. Our lives depend on it.
We live in a world where black people are targeted for death and destruction, and we should not be surprised when moments such as these occur - in fact, Charlottesville confirms the violence that black people endure every day.
Wherever there are communities fighting for freedom and liberation, there are serious tensions.
What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving rather than their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.
Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.
When you grow up with a significant amount of trauma, you are realizing it as you get older, and you're realizing the ways you can recover from that trauma. The things that I have witnessed and that I have been through, it's going to take a lifetime to undo.
The Trump administration has done everything in its power to uphold the harsh racist reality we have faced.
