Alicia Garza Co-founder Black Lives Matter

The activist wants Americans to understand that racism is about much more than people being mean to each other.

- Josh Eidelson

People often trace Black Lives Matter to three years ago. The night George Zimmerman was acquitted after killing Trayvon Martin, you went on Facebook and wrote …

A rant is what I called it, but it ended up being a love letter to black people. There was so much being said either about “we already knew that was going to happen,” or about what black folks need to do to prevent ourselves from being murdered —“just vote,” “just get a better education. …” None of that deals with how vigilantes are grown and supported by laws, or how to eradicate systemic racism.

So I wrote a love letter, ending with, “Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter.” Patrisse Cullors put a hash tag in front of it. And we started talking about building and organizing to really be a magnet for people who wanted to figure out how to fight back. And our sister Opal Tometi helped us build the platforms online to connect people. All three of us were organizers. So part of what we asked our network to do was to use “Black Lives Matter” in their work if it was helpful. Folks did.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about Black Lives Matter?

That we only care about black people. 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.

In conversations about racism in American culture or politics, the focus is often on racism as a personal defect or an attitude. Does that make it harder to take on systemic racism?