Movement Maker
Principal, Black Futures Lab
Oakland, CA
TOPICS
Race
Feminism
Activism
Policy
Politics
Alicia Garza is someone who believes that black communities deserve what all communities deserve — to be powerful in every aspect of their lives. That’s what drives the innovator, strategist, organizer, and cheeseburger enthusiast.
Alicia wears many hats in her work: She is the Principal of Black Futures Lab, an organization with the mission of making black communities powerful in politics, and Co-Founder of Supermajority, a new home for women’s activism. She is also the Strategy & Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against black people.
Her book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, was released in October 2020. Part memoir, part manifesto, the book gives insight into Alicia’s career as an organizer and outlines what it takes to build a successful and inclusive movement that addresses the greatest challenges we’re facing today. TIME magazine called the book “urgent and critically necessary” and named it one of the best books of 2020, along with Marie Claire and Kirkus.
Every successful social movement in this country's history has used disruption as a strategy to fight for social change. Whether it was the Boston Tea Party to the sit-ins at lunch counters throughout the South, no change has been won without disruptive action.
We are clear that all lives matter, but we live in a world where that's not actually happening in practice. So if we want to get to the place where all lives matter, then we have to make sure that black lives matter, too.