Television company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Thank you for joining us all tonight, for ideas and actions, lisa and jackson im a communication director for the countrys Largest OnlineRacial Justice organization. And im here to introduce tonights event. We are partnering with oneworld tonight to make a virtual space for critical conversation between editorinchief and one of our most powerful, organizes and visionaries leave the guards that, alecia wrote a book a Facebook Post through created a movement and said black people i love you, i love that our lives matter, black lives matter. That Movement Continues today and tonight they will discuss the importance of resistance and resilience and how they ground the work in the vision for collective humanity. The color of change and we believe the everyday people are powerful enough to in that are Holding Black people back and harming our country. We champion solution that move us all forward. In the last two weeks we have helped 6. 5 Million People take action for Racial Justice in our country and were thrilled to be partnering today with one through this important conversation, without further ado here is chris jackson, oneworld editorinchief to kickoff. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight, i cannot imagine somebody else id rather be talking to tonight then alecia garza, one of our countrys most powerful influential actress and i think and speak critically well to this moment, before we start to want to think color change for working with us again on this project tonight and all the people who have been so active in getting this all organized. Lets maybe take a short moment of silence for the many tens of thousands of people who we have lost in this pandemic that we are undergoing, people have been disproportionately black, brown, native, disabled, elderly and poor and also all those that we lost two racially motivated violence vertically racially motivated violence in the name of the state and ill call out three names tonight, amid aubrey, Breonna Taylor and george floyd. I hope you join me for a short moment of silence to begin. Now i would like to invite our virtual stage alicia garza. It is so good to see you. Its so good to see you and great to be seen. I want to start the conversation out by going back a little bit, i think a moment like this is being very upsetting and jarring to us but also for a lot of people its awakening and i think about my own life growing up in new york and harlem in the 70s and 80s how they probably develop most rapidly around the most dramatic moments of the of comingofage and were doing with proximities of death and so many people who were murdered during that period in my neighborhood but also so many people who they lost the Police Violence and the first time i was out on the street and protest those deaths, can you tell us a little bit about center been working on this book together for some time now and i know so much about your own story but one of the interesting things that youve always been somebody whos driven toward activism from childhood but there was inflection points like the murder of oscar grant and oakland that really drove in accelerated. Definitely. For me i actually came up in the Reproductive Justice Movement and got really politicized around the idea that young people could not make good decisions about what to do with our bodies. This was a time when bush number one and others were really pushing the narrative in the country around not only the focus on the family narrative but it was very much about controlling womens bodies and for me, my mother had me and she did not expect to have me alone and the thing that gave her options is that she had them. So she used to talk to me coming up as a young kid and she would tell me makes babies and babies are expensive, i did not get any of the birds and bees talk and i did not get any of that. It was really when i was in college to be frank that i got politicized around Racial Justice. At that time in the late 1990s, early 2000, there was a lot happening in terms of the aftermath of uprising that had shaped our entire country. We all watched as rodney king was brutally beaten on video cameras which were not actually popular at that time and then of course if you fastforward to oscar grant and my community which is a few blocks from my home and i remember coming home after a new year celebration and turning on the television after midnight and seen three blocks from my house, oscar grant had been shot in front of a train full of observers and it just so happened that a young person who is interning at the organization that i worked at was one of the people who caught the entire thing on camera and actually became a part of the movie station and so there are these inflection points where we start to understand that our lives are bigger than us but we also understand that our lives are being shaped by people other than us. We have an opportunity to decide if we think that is right and if that is fair and if we think the ways that our life are being shaped lead us toward wellness and dignity, humanity and wholeness and whether the way that our lives are being shaped and leading us towards punishment and criminalization and injustice. If each one of those inflection points we get to make a choice about who were going to be. For me at a very young age at 12 years old i decided im going to be somebody who not only tells different stories about when people are doing, no teenagers are not running around having 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 were being denied the information and the resources that we need to make decisions that work for us. We are being denied access that we deserve to desire and pleasure and intimacy by somebody who frankly has a whole different agenda about our bodies and our lives, do we think that is right or do we think that is wrong and if we think that is wrong, what are we going to do about it. For me i got politicized and active in the movement and for others they might shake their head and say its a shame that some people dont have access to what they need and they move on with their lives but then of course we come into moments like this where you cannot move on with your life, your everyday normal is interrupted by people who have decided to take action. Even in those moments you get to make a choice about who youre going to be and what youre going to contribute. That is really interesting, the question comes to me particular in this moment and listening to your story and think about your story that ive been doing for some time is that we seem to go in these moments where there are erections of visible Movement Activity and you talk about what happened with oscar grant and the bay area and black lives matter which formed around a series of events going back to Trayvon Martin and ferguson and so forth. And now here we are again, are we just going in a loop or do you feel like each one of these things we are getting closer to something. That is such a good question. I can say in writing the book, are we going in a loop or are we moving forward . We assess our strategies. And require us to frankly keep pushing forward. I know there is a lot. [inaudible] black lives matter, people are saying all lives matter. Keating on one second period, can you hear me, one second, can you hold on, we are having a little bit of a technical difficulty with your repeat that last thing you said please. Sure totally. I sang in 2013 and 2014, we were pariahs in terms of politics. We would say black lives matter and people would say all lives matter. That was the most common response. We were not seen as a legitimate political force. We were not seen as a movement. We were seen as people who were radical. Even in our own communities, right . We were seen for people example who were trying to move a yea agenda and interrupt a black agenda. There are lots of ways and we are in such a different place than we were then. Host im sorry, im sorry. Guest there is still work to be done. I dont have paint a rosy picture here. Frankly we are still watching the extrajudicial murders of black people on television. Because we capture them on cell phone cameras. And it is only when there is an outcry that there is any semblance of political will to address it. We are going in a circular pattern and how we conceive of how we solve this problem once and for all. I do worry, just like in 2014 where we got body cameras as a result of, you know protest, that ferguson led in relationship to the murder of mike brown, maybe today what we get is better training. Or nicer police. But fundamentally there is still a big challenge we are facing. Which is, what do we do about the role of Law Enforcement in our communities . Is it enough to have better training . Or to restrict their practices . Or do we actually need to narrow the focus of Law Enforcement in the first place . It is an important conversation for america to have right now. For some it is an uncomfortable one. But seven years ago black lives matter to me people uncomfortable. And being uncomfortable is actually good for this country. People were uncomfortable and black people were fighting for the right to be enfranchised. People were uncomfortable when women were being the womens right to be franchise prayed look for we have come. Now it is not uncomfortable to believe that women should have the right to vote. It is not uncomfortable for us to believe that black people should have the right to vote. It doesnt mean that those rights arent still under a tax. Absolutely not. But it means that we are in a different place because we have those rights and we are defending them. As opposed to needing to create those rights. And so, history is not circular and that way. It is a spiral. And i believe, really deeply and profoundly that we are closer than we have been before. And that gives me hope. That is actually an encouraging socks. You have this thing in the book where you talk about, you reference a lot the theory about changing common sense and things like that. Change the basic premise. And you can grow something new. You can say about the Minneapolis Police department or the city council you talk about eliminating and rebuilding in its place. Which is unimaginable that a major city would be talking about that. Is that kind of thing give you a sense of possibility as what might come . Absolutely. I woke up and saw that article pretty was the first thing i read when i open my eyes this morning. And all i keep saying to myself is what a time to be live, right . The fact that Minneapolis City Council is not only considering redistribute in funds so that we dont address needs that communities have with police who arent equipped to address those needs is incredible. It is a conversation that organizers and advocates have been pushing for the better part of 20 years. So i can tell you, what a time to be live. I can also say, i keep seeing things at the School District in minneapolis saying they are ending their contracts with police and what that means for a decade of having police in schools announcing were not going to do that theyre moving some of the same proposals. So we should remember that when we see things like this, it is the result of organizing. It is the result of the pressure on people to have the political will and courage to examine new ways of operating and that is fundamentally what movements can accomplish. And you know, we should not expect that every movement has a strategy on a blueprint that they hand to you and you can plug into. So much of what movements do is respond to changing conditions. Takes the pulse of what communities long for. But also, what communities are scared of, right . And push the envelope to get closer to what it is we deserve. So we are watching this in real time. And it is fundamentally incredible. We must, must, must, give most credit to the bad organizers in that city who have really create the tradition to make this happen. And then have engaged us to work with them to help amplify it. That is just really a blessing. Host that is a lot i feel like is wet, what you have to offer people in your book. In the model of your life. The question, how do you the original title for your book was Something Like how did become a movement. But how can you take something from the point of being a germ of an idea as it wasnt 2014, of course like you said 20 years before that people have been working towards this kind of reform. How do you keep the pressure on . How do you build it from being a kind of moment to being a movement . Guest while there is a science and an art. [laughter] from the time when opal and i 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 did not have a roadmap. We really relight out instincts, and we relied on relationships. We paid attention to what was going on and moving in the world. And i hope that does not feel or sound amorphous. But thats the secret sauce, who you are in relationship to. What they are working on what you are working on. Also, frankly, what time it is in the country. Right . 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 that were of interest for that momen moment. Our first gathering, frankly, was a Conference Call that we pulled together after the killer of mcbride was convicted of murder. And we know the cases a vigilante murder and Police Murder that often times the aggressors are not held accountable. And in this particular case, he was held accountable and currently sits in jail. That was a victory that was the result of organizing. I have a dream is going to maddy for saying it from going to sit anyway, hansen is not only bad organizers were bad writer. Shes also bad organizer. She works with people in michigan to make sure that mcbrides death would not go unaccounted for. And after that, we held a conversation because frankly, so many of us believe that justice comes from people going to jail. And while 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 places to be. Prisons and jails do not have rehabilitate people they do not bring the lives back they do not address harm. So we held a National Conference call as black lives matter about whether or not him being convicted was justice. We had people in all different sides of the spectrum giving their feedback and input. Those were the types of spaces we really try to create. And from that, right, we started to build a reputation of creating spaces or people to connect. Not only online, but then moving into 2014 when mike brown was killed, patrice darnell had a great idea to organize a freedom ride to 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 is also a strategic aspect to it frankly, one of the things we heard a lot with that main stream media was telling their own story of what was happening in ferguson. They were telling stories of looters and rioters and unrest all of the images you would see on tv with tanks rubber bullets and tear gas, we organize a black media to go to ferguson and to be able 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 ferguson conversation, because ferguson leaders needed to tell that story. I am winking and nodding at you that might be the next book. [laughter] i will say that we left ferguson and did not think we were going to go back. But the people who came said we want to keep organizing. They actually forced us to form chapters. We were like we are not prepared for this. [laughter] but they said we are. So you have already run your mouth, you created this umbrella. So lets go. And so i just walked that story out today to say there is no recipe here. It is really about instincts, it is about network, it is about timing. And frankly it is about being able to move when you just know it is right. One of the things it so beautiful about the way you talk about movements in the book come not to plug the book again, but in the book you do talk about. [laughter] how, for you it was fundamentally a way to connect to other people. Which i thought was like a beautiful way to write it and begin the story. Its not about like some big abstract political goal necessarily it is about how we connect. We can start to share a vision for the world we want to bring into b. In that connection cant just happen online. Although we are obviously doing a lot online right now. The interesting thing is that it is not online that the movement is happening. Even under the cloud of this pandemic people feel like they need to go in and see each other. And meet with each other. And marched together. Portier thoughts of connection. That includes things like in your life knock on doors, go in peoples homes. Hear them, sit with them, listen to them. How does that make a big difference is the poster not just what we can do online or what we can do through social media, what is a human component wise is important . You know, everybody longs for connection. Thats what makes us human, literally. We cant live in isolation. In fact we put people in isolation you actually see folks deteriorate. When you hear stories of people who are in solitary confinement, they tell you that literally they start to deteriorate because we as human beings depend on connections to surviv survive. It is how we read the world. It is how we read one another. And you know kind of making sense of this moment, organizing is fundamentally rooted in connection. And when i was being trained as an organizer, i was always told organizing wasnt about getting somebody to get involved in your campaign. It wasnt about getting somebody to use your slogan. It was fundamentally about relationships. And everything moves at the speed of relationships. I will g