2014, alicia garzer wrote a Facebook Post that changed the world and created a movement, it read black people, i love you, i love us, all lives matter, black lives matter. That continues today. Tonight alicia garzer and Chris Jackson will discuss resistance and resilience and how they ground the work in the vision, every day people are powerful enough to end practices that are unfairly Holding Black people back and harming our country and we Champion Solutions that move us forward. In the last few weeks we held help 6 Million People take action for racial justice, both an important conversation. Chris jackson, one world editor in chief will kick us off. Thank you very much for being here with us. Cant imagine who i would rather be talking to tonight. Alicia garzer, one of our countrys most powerful who can speak particularly well at this moment. I want to thank color change for working with us on this project tonight and people who have been so active in getting it organized. To take a short moment of silence for the tens of thousands of people who we lost in this pandemic we are undergoing, disproportionately black, disproportionately brown, disabled, elderly and poor and for those we lost 2 racially motivated violence in the name of the state. I will call out three names tonight, breanna taylor, george floyd, please join me for a short moment of silence to begin. And now i would like to invite you to our virtual stage, alicia garzer. So good to see you. It is good to be seen. I want to start a conversation out by going back a little bit. For a lot of people very upsetting and jarring, moments of awakening and i think in my own life growing up in new york and harlem in the 70s and 80s, political consciousness developed most rapidly around the most traumatic moments of that coming of age. So many people were murdered during that period in my neighborhood but also people we lost 2 police violence, protesting those. Can you tell us, worked on this book together for some time now, one of the things that you have driven toward activism, there were these inflection points in oakland that drove and accelerated your commitment. Definitely. For me i came up in the Reproductive Justice Movement and got really politicized around the idea that younger people couldnt make good decisions what to do with our bodies. This was a time when others were pushing this narrative around not only focus on the family narrative but very much about controlling womens bodies and for me, my mother had me and didnt expect to have me alone and the things that gave her options, she had them. She used to talk to me as a young kid and tell me sex makes babies and babies are expensive. I didnt get the birds and the bees talk, none of that. When i was in college i got politicized around racial justice. At that time in the late 1990s early 2000s there was a lot happening in terms of the aftermath of uprising that shaped the entire country. We watched as rodney king was brutally beaten, it was not popular at that time. Oscar grant in the community, i remember coming home after a new years celebration and turning on the television after midnight, and oscar grant had been shot in front of a train full of the observers and it just so happened that a young person interning at an organization i worked at was one of the people who caught it on camera and it became a part of the movie and there were these inflection points, understand our lives are bigger than us but also understand our lives are being shaped by people other than us. If we decide that is not right or fair or the ways our lives are shaped, lead us toward wellness, in wholeness or the way our lives are being shaped are leading us toward punishment and criminalization and injustice and each of those inflection points we make a point of who we are going to be and for me a young age at 12 years old i decided i will be somebody who not only tells different stories about what young people are doing, teenagers are not running around having sex like crazy but there are those of us who are in intimate relationships who are trying to figure out what is best for us and we are being denied the information and resources we need to make decisions that work for us. We are being denied the access we deserve to desire and pleasure and intimacy by somebody who has a different agenda about our bodies and our lives. Do we think that is right or do we think that is wrong . If we think that is wrong what are we going to do about it . I got politicized and active in the movement. Others might shake their head and say it is a shame people dont have access to what they need and they move on with their lives. We come into moments like this you cant move on, your everyday normal is interrupted by people who decided to take action and even in those moments you make a choice about who you are going to be and what you are going to contribute. What i think, the question comes to me in this moment, thinking about your story, in these moments there were these eruptions of visible movement activity, in the bay area, black lives matter which formed around a series of events going back to Treyvon Martin and ferguson and here we are again. Are we going in a loop or does each of these things, we are getting closer to something. A good question. In writing the book are we going in a loop or are we moving forward . Honestly the way i think about and look at history and the connection between the two, we are not going in circles where we end up right where we began. I imagine it like a spiral, you are not coming back to the place you started from. You look at where you started an assessment gap in between. Things are not the same now. [silence] was that our strategy . It requires us to keep pushing forward. There is a lot. People were saying all lives matter. And we are having a little bit of technical difficulty. Repeat the last thing you said. Just saying in 201314 we were pariahs in terms of politics, we would say black lives matter and people say all lives matter and we were not seen as a legitimate political force. We were not seen as a movement. People who were radicals. Even in our own communities we were seen as people who were trying to move a gay agenda and interrupt the black agenda. Lots of ways in which we are in such a different place. Host i am sorry. Guest there is still work to be done. I dont want to paint a rosy picture here. The extra murders of black people on television because we catch them on cell phone cameras, it is only when there is an outcry, any semblance of political will to address it. How we solve this problem once and for all. I do worry just like in 2014 where we got body cameras and the result of protests ferguson leaders, to the murder of my crown, what we get is better training and nicer police but fundamentally there is a big challenge we are facing, what do we do about the role of Law Enforcement, is it enough to restrict their practices or do we narrow the focus and role of Law Enforcement in the first place and it is an important conversation for america to have, i can say six and years ago, black lives matter may people and comfortable and it is good for this country. People are uncomfortable when black people were fighting for the right to be enfranchised. People were uncomfortable when women were fighting for the right to be enfranchised and look where we have come. It is not uncomfortable to believe women should have the right to vote. It is not uncomfortable to believe black people should have the right to vote. Doesnt mean those rights are under attack, absolutely not but it means we are in a different place because we are having those rights and defending them as opposed to create those rights. History is not circular in that way. It is a spiral. I believe deeply and profoundly we are closer than we have been before. Host that is an encouraging thought. You have something in the book where you talk about this theory about changing the core of a revolution with the basic premise where society operates from. And city council in minneapolis literally eliminating and rebuilding something in its place which is unimaginable a major city would talk about that. Does that give you a sense of possibility . All i keep saying to myself is what a time to be alive. The minneapolis the council is not only considering redistributing funds so that we dont address needs communities have with police who arent addressing those needs. It is something that organizers and advocates initiate for the better part. What a time to be alive. I keep seeing things like the School District in minneapolis say they are ending their contract with police and what that means for a decade of having police in schools to say we are not going to do that is very powerful. In los angeles they are moving the same proposals. When you see things like this, it is the result of organizing, the result of pressure on people to have the political will and the courage to examine new ways of operating and that is fundamentally what movements can accomplish, you shouldnt expect every movement has a strategy or a blueprint they can hand to you. So much of what muslims do is respond to changing traditions, take the pulse of what communities long for but also what communities are scared of, push the envelope to get closer to what it is we deserve. We are watching this in real time and it is fundamentally incredible. We must must must give most credit to the organizers in the city to create the conditions that make this happen and engaged us to work with it and amplify it. Host in your book, with that model in your life, the visual title for your book, a Hashtag Movement but how is it you can take something from the point of the germ of an idea as it was in 2014 and 20 years before that when people have been working towards this for rum, how do you keep the pressure, keep it from building from a moment to being a movement . Guest there is a science and there is an art. From the time we created the black lives Matter Network which started from a series of social media platforms and grew into a network with chapters all over the world, we didnt have a roadmap. We relied on instinct and relationship and we paid attention to what was going on. I hope that doesnt feel or sound amorphous. Who you are in a relationship to, what they are working on and what you are working on also frankly what time it is in the country and your willingness to keep pushing things forward. We tried so many things. We held Conference Calls, National Conference calls for people to talk about issues of interest for that moment, our first gathering was a Conference Call we pulled together after the killer of Connie Mcbride was convicted of murder. In cases of vigilante murder and cases of Police Murder that oftentimes the aggressors are not held accountable and in this case, headway was held accountable land he sits in jail. That was a victory that was the result of organizing, i am going to say this, jim hansen is not only a that is organizer and badass writer but an organizer, she worked with people in michigan to make sure her death would not go unaccounted for and after that we held a conversation because frankly so many of us believed justice comes from people going to jail. That might make us feel better, make us feel like they are feeling what we are feeling the fact of the matter is prisons and jails are terrible place to be, prisons and jails do not rehabilitate people, they do not bring lives back, they do not address harm. We held a National Conference call as black lives matter about whether or not this was justice and we had people on all different sides of the spectrum giving their feedback and input and those were the spaces we tried to create and from that we started to build a reputation for people to connect not only online but moving into 2014 when mike brown was killed, patrice and darnell had a great idea to organize the freedom rides in ferguson, another way for people to connect directly to what is happening on the ground. Not only was it intended for people to be able to connect and offer support but there was also a strategic aspect to it. One of the things we heard a lot was Mainstream Media was telling their own story of what was happening in ferguson, they were telling stories of looters and rioters and unrest and all the images you would see on tv were of tanks and rubber bullets and tear gas so we organized black media to go to ferguson and to tell that story from a black perspective which made a difference in terms of how the story began to be told from that point forward and i think that without getting too far into the ferguson conversation because ferguson leaders need to tell that story so i am winking and nodding at you that that might be the next book but i will say we left ferguson and didnt think we were going to go back but the people who came said we want to keep organizing and they forced us to form chapters. We are not prepared for this. But they are like we are and you all have already run your mouths and created this umbrella and i walk that story out to say there is no recipe. It is really about instinct, network, timing and frankly it is about being able to move when you just know it is right. One of the things that is so beautiful about the way you talk about movements and activism, in the book you talk about this how for you activism was fundamentally a way to connect to other people which i thought that was a beautiful way to begin the story, not like a big abstract movement but this is how we connect and share a vision for all world we want to bring into being and that cant just happen online although we are doing a lot of texting online right now but interesting it is not online the movement is happening now even under this cloud of this pandemic people feel they need to go in the streets and see each other and march together. What is your special thought of connection that includes things like knock on doors, go in peoples homes, touch them, hear them, visit them, listen to them, how does that make a big difference, not to dismiss what we can do online or through social media but why is it so important . Everybody longest for connection. That is what makes us human, we cant live in isolation and when we put people in isolation you see folks deteriorate. When you hear stories of people in solitary confinement they tell you that literally they start to deteriorate because we as human beings depends on connections to survive. It is how we read the world, it is how we read one another and making sense of this moment, organizing is fundamentally rooted in connection. When i was trained as an organizer i was told organizing wasnt about getting somebody involved in your campaign are getting somebody to use your slogan. It was fundamentally about relationships and everything moves at the speed of relationships. I will give you an example. When i was organizing, the only way i could get people to do something outside their comfort zone was do something on their front porch, at their kids recitals, meeting kids that their Kitchen Table when making dinner after a long day of work. People need to know that they can trust you and when we look at all great movements throughout history we notice a similar response, look at the last period of civil rights people moved at the speed of relationship and that was connection and for safety, in certain environments if people didnt know who your people where they didnt mess with you. I can tell you my southern relatives are still the same way, where do you come from . A way to make sense of who you are and what your motives are and moving into this moment i think you saw people rush out of their homes in the midst of a political pandemic because being isolated in your house while you are watching on television somebody who looks like you being brutally murdered while the officer looks into the camera while he is doing it makes you feel so incredibly alone and fearful and hopeless and so why people pour into the streets is to be connected to the energy of other people sharing a similar experience. Every one of us who has experienced injustice in the world wonders if it is only us or if other people have had that experience too. And movements bring together people who long for not fueling gas lit around the experiences they have every day that they know are wrong but cant quite place why or who is responsible and movements also give us an opportunity to challenge and channel the anger, isolation, fear and rage into something productive. Sometimes it becomes a law or a policy. Other times it becomes an ecosystem of organizations that are fighting back against the injustices and the ways in which our communities are disenfranchised. You look at organizations like the movement for black lives, you will see that it is a beautiful rich ecosystem of organizations working together and independently to impact the lives of black people. In that coalition we suddenly again feel less alone, more powerful. We take risks we dont take alone but the nucleus of being able to know why this is happening to me to i am willing to be somebody who changes it and fundamentally require connection and relationship. That is so interesting and so true. Sort of watching what is going on from a difference, the difference in being in the middle of it and feeling that energy, people who you feel a sense that you are not alone, feeling like there is real power, not just my feeling. We can do something with this feeling, it is powerful. Doing something with that feeling, going back to the bride story, you had to consider what does justice look like . What does accountability look like right now for the people who were immediately responsible, that hasnt even happened, the first level of accountability hasnt happened but in the larger sense, structures they make accountable to this. How do we go to this level or that level with power. A satisfying answer. The are in this moment, the fact of the matter is these systems we are fighting are as old as this country and they will take a while to undo. There are times we can speed up the project, the progress of that project requires a methodical approach to changing what is possible politically and you need to do that in a range of ways. I can sit here and tell you there are policies we can enact that will stop police from using chokeholds, to put their knee on someones that can a way to restrain them. There are things we can do, to waste nicer police, i want to be honest with you and say many places arent having those policies in place but no one to enforce them. To get into the cyclical pattern of what i think is finding the shortest distance, rathe